From the issue dated November 16, 2007

SYLLABUS Volume 54, Issue 12, Page A10

U. of New Hampshire Course Puts Mental Illness in Historical Context

By EUGENE MCCORMACK

"Madness in America," University of New Hampshire

In this upper-level course, students learn how popular and professional concepts of mental illness have
changed in the United States since the start of the 20th century. In addition to reading the writings of
therapists, former psychiatric patients, and historians, students watch Hollywood films and read novels
that depict mental illness.

Benjamin Harris, a professor of psychology who has taught the class for eight years, says that students
often have strong opinions about treatments for and causes of mental illnesses, but that the course
design forces them to view everything from a historical perspective. "Undergraduates are trained to
look for truth," Mr. Harris says, "and I bend over backwards saying you need to understand the
popularity of ideas in the 30s based on the 30s."

Students study how the Great Depression helped spur a debate in psychiatry over whether capitalism
was responsible for a growth in mental illness, and how the 1950s helped influence the thoughts of
some 1960s psychologists who believed that schizophrenia was a voyage toward less alienation that
should be encouraged. They also study the evolution of the earlier debate over lobotomies and the
more recent one over drug treatments.

Students also learn how films like The Snake Pit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and graphic
documentaries influenced public opinion concerning state mental hospitals and the treatment of
patients.

Students say:

Katie Floyd, a senior psychology major, wrote her final paper on how the often-frightening depiction
of electroconvulsive therapy in film has influenced the public's attitude toward the procedure. This was
the first course she had taken on the history of psychology, and she said she had to adjust to the idea of
viewing events as neither strictly good nor bad. Still, on the topic of lobotomies, she says, "you wonder
how they ever could have thought that was a good idea."

Reading list:

Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, by Alex Beam (Public
Affairs, 2001); A Mind That Found Itself, by Clifford W. Beers (Longmans, Green, and Company,
1908); I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenberg (Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1964); One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (Viking, 1962).

Assignments:

Weekly writing assignments on required readings, as well as two midterm exams and a final exam.
Each student must also give an oral presentation and write a term paper.

______________________________________________
Here is a description of the course as it will be taught next semester:

Psych 791 E01 Wed’s, 2:10- 5 pm

UNH Fall 2011
Madness in America

Topic and Goal:

This course will examine how popular and professional concepts of mental illness
have changed in America. We will read the writings of former psychiatric patients
as well as that of therapists, researchers, social critics, and historians of
psychology and psychiatry. We will also study motion pictures, documentaries,
novels, autobiographies, and biographies for their expression of cultural values,
public attitudes, and popular views of mental health and illness.

We will look at the impact of WWI and WWII on how people thought about
madness and how it was treated. One event from the 1960s that we will study is
the removal of homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of the American
Psychiatric Association. Another is the rise and fall of the lobotomy (in the 1940s
and 1950s). Throughout the 20th century, we consider the question: have women
been stigmatized by psychiatrists and psychologists? The overall goal in the
course is for students to see how psychiatric and psychological theories are
shaped by historical events as well as scientific and medical research.

Instructor: Prof. Ben Harris office: Conant 304

email: bh5@unh.edu tel: 862-4107

Examples of books that we will read:

Alex Beam, Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental
Hospital. (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). [this is a popular history of McLean
Hospital in Belmont Mass]

Clifford W. Beers, A Mind That Found Itself. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh

Press, 1981). [Originally published in 1908, this is the autobiography of a former
patient who founded the mental health movement].

Hanna Green [Joanne Greenberg. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. (New
York: New American Library, 1963/1989). [this is an autobiographical account of a
schizophrenic adolescent who was successfully treated by the psychoanalyst
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann].

Examples of films that we will see: Let There Be Light (1945), Snake Pit
(1948), Madness of King George (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), Girl, Interrupted
(1999).

Note: this course is cross-listed in the American Studies Program.