Prof.

Harris Reading List for Madness in America Spring 2010

Wednesday, January 27th

Introduction to Course; Environmental Causes and Cures

This course is a critical, historical look at events and people in psychiatry, psychology and mental
health in the 20th century United States. We begin, however, in an earlier time, to see changes in
how mental illness was viewed and treated. Beginning in the late 1700s, moral treatment gradually
replaced physical restraints and heroic attempts to cure mental illness (e.g., by fright). According
to some critics, moral treatments imposed greater control over the individual and were not
necessarily benevolent in their intent. Other historians disagree and see this view as conspiratorial.

Required Reading:

Beam, Alex. (2001). Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital.
New York: Public Affairs. (Chapter 1) [chapters 2 & 3 are good but optional].

Stearns, Henry Putnam. (1879). The Relations Of Insanity To Modern Civilization. Scribner’s
Monthly, 17, 582-585. [optional: NYTimes profile of Stearns].
.
Yanni, C. (2003). The linear plan for insane asylums in the United States
before 1866. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 62, 24-
49. please note that there are lots of details here that are not
important for this class. Please read it for the big picture and
the major people and ideas, not every small detail. Study
question: what disagreements have occurred between authors
about how to interpret the early history of psychiatry (e.g., the
nature of moral treatment)?

Syllabus, reading list, plagiarism statement (this and most other readings are on Blackboard)

A Pocket Style Manual (excerpts)

Wednesday, February 3rd

The Discovery of the Psychic Sources of Mental Illness:

Sigmund Freud, Adolph Meyer and Stanley McCormick

A neurologist by training, Sigmund Freud shifted to a more psychological view of mental illness in
the late 19th century.. In the U.S., Adolph Meyer is considered to be the father of American
psychiatry, combining biological, social and psychological factors to understand mental illness.
Stanley McCormick was one of his most eccentric (and richest and most difficult) patients.
Study Q’s: How does McCormick’s illness fit (or not fit) Meyer’s eclectic view of the causes of
mental illness? How does his illness relate to capitalism and the social issues that accompany it?

To be shown in class: selection from In Search of Ourselves

Required:
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Caplan, E. (1998). Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press (pp. 105-113).
Harrington, A. (2008). The Cure Within. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. (pp. 67-80)
Beam, Gracefully Insane, Chapter 4
Pols, Hans. 1999. Adolph Meyer. In American National Biography, John [Link] and Mark C.
Carnes, Eds. New York: Oxford University Press.

Optional:
Boyle, T. C. 1998. Riven Rock. New York: Viking.
Noll, Richard. 1999. Styles of psychiatric practice, 1906–1925: Clinical evaluations of the same patient by
James Jackson Putnam, Adolph Meyer, August Hoch, Emil Kraepelin and Smith Ely [Link]
of Psychiatry, 10: 145-189.
Lunbeck, Elizabeth. 1987. "A New Generation of Women": Progressive Psychiatrists and the Hypersexual
Female. Feminist Studies, 13, 513-543. good expert reading
Lunbeck, Elizabeth. 1999. Abraham Myerson. . In American National Biography, John A. Garraty and
Mark C. Carnes, Eds. New York: Oxford University Press.
Winters, E. E. (1966). Adolf Meyer’s two and a half years at Kankakee. Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
43, 414-443. good expert reading
ANB bio of Abraham Meyerson and Meyerson’s article on prominent New England families with mental
illness this corrects Beam’s claim that Meyerson didn’t find humor in the mental illness of
Boston elite families.
.
Wednesday, February 10th

Clifford Beers and the Early Mental Hygiene Movement

The mental hygiene movement was an early 20th century reform, typical of the Progressive Era.
As with other reforms, seemingly revolutionary changes were channeled into preserving the system
rather than overthrowing it. Personified by Beers, the complaints of individuals took a back seat to
the struggle by M.D.’s to defend their authority and control. Study Q’s: How does Beers attempt
to win the affections of his readers? What is left out of his memoir? What is left out of his
personal and family history? What disagreements over Beers’ character and role in history do you
find in the readings for this week? What are the biases of each author you read?

Required:

Vicary, Elizabeth Zoe. 1999. Beers, Clifford W. In American National Biography, John A. Garraty
and Mark C. Carnes, Eds. New York: Oxford University Press.
Beers, Clifford W. 1981. A Mind That Found Itself. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press
(including preface and forward).
Letters from Clifford Beers
Harris’ review of Norman Dain (1978).

Optional Reading:

Dain, Norman. 1978. Clifford W. Beers and the Mental Hygiene Movement. In Psychoanalysis,
Psychotherapy and the New England Medical Scene, 1894-1944, ed. George E. Gifford, Jr., 119-
[Link] reading for expert of the day
Dain, Norman. 1980. Clifford Beers: Advocate for the Insane. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh
Press.
Winters, E. E. (1969). Adolf Meyer and Clifford Beers, 1907-1910. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 40,
[Link] reading

Wednesday, February 17th

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Psychiatry and the First World War
The First World War produced thousands of cases of “shell shock,” recognized as male hysteria.
Elaine Showalter argues that since hysteria had been a disease of powerlessness, a mass of male
sufferers provoked a cultural crisis in England and Europe. On the clinical front, psychological
treatment of shell shock helped convince many psychiatrists of the validity of psychoanalytic
notions of the unconscious and repression. Study Q’s: Elaine Showalter is a Professor of English
not a historian. How does that shape her account? Can you find her slanting or discounting
historical evidence to suit her overall thesis? What is her overall thesis? How are her sources of
information more interesting than those that a traditional historian might use? How are they
problematic and possibly biased compared to those that a traditional historian might use?

Required:

Showalter, Elaine. 1985. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980.
New York: Pantheon. (Chapter 7).

Optional Reading:
Barker, Pat. 1992. Regeneration.
Gilbert, Sandra M. 1983. Soldier's Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War. Signs 8: 422-
[Link] pp
Woolf, Virginia. 1925. Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt Brace. good expert of the day resource
DNB entries on Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and W. R. Rivers
Mrs. Dalloway (motion picture) good expert of the day resource
Regeneration (motion picture)

Wednesday, February 24th

Mental Hygiene in the 1930s; WWII Psychiatry

After WWI, Hans Pols shows, the application of clinical and mental hygiene notions to social
problems revealed conflicting political visions of psyche and society.

In the 1940s, the experiences of the Second World War transformed psychiatry and psychology in
America. For liberals and radicals alike, it offered a chance to use psychology to combat racism
and prejudice at home while fighting fascism abroad. Among clinicians, the treatment of combat
neuroses showed the validity of neo-Freudian ideas about the unconscious, repression, and the
benefits of talking-therapies. To treat the masses of psychiatric casualties from the war, psychiatry
and clinical psychology launched training programs that turned out thousands of new clinicians,
either young graduates or established Ph.D.’s who moved from experimental to clinical
psychology.
Study Q’s: How did liberals, reactionaries and radicals see the problems of capitalism differently
during the Great Depression? How do these different views appear in the fields of psychiatry and
psychology at that time? Were radicals and liberals willing to collaborate during WWII? Why
might they have been? What distortions of political and social judgment resulted from this
collaboration?

To be shown in class: Let There Be Light (and first hour of Snake Pit?)

Required:

Pols, Hans. 2001. Divergences in American Psychiatry During the Depression: Somatic Psychiatry,
Community Mental Hygiene, and Social Reconstruction. Journal of the History of the
Behavioral Sciences 37: 369-388.
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S.H. Kraines letter to the editor of Science, 1937.

Articles on Let There Be Light (Blackboard)

Herman, Ellen. 1995. The Romance of American Psychology. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press. (Chapter 4).

Optional Reading:
Harris, B. (1999). J. F. Brown; Otto Klineberg; In J. A. Garraty and M. C. Carnes (Eds.), American
National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.

Capshew, James H. 1999. “From the Margins,” Chapter 6 in James Capshew, Psychologists on the March:
Science, Practice, and Professional Identity in America, 1929-1969. New York: Cambridge
University Press.

Grob, Gerald N. 1991. From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 1.

Wednesday, March 3rd Post-War Reforms and the Rise of Social Psychiatry
After WWII, a number of exposés drew the public’s attention to the underfunded, overcrowded
state hospitals that delivered most mental health care in the U.S. One, the autobiography of a
former patient, was made into the Oscar winning film The Snake Pit. Although this film was widely
influential, it was criticized in the 1970s for imposing an anti-feminist, simplistic Freudian plot
onto a story of one woman’s struggle to free herself.

The mid-1940s saw a struggle take place for control of the American Psychiatric Association. The
APA’s old guard were mostly organicists who wanted their organization to stay away from social
and professional issues. The “young Turks” were mostly neo-Freudians who believed that
psychiatry should address issues like segregation, fascism, and the causes of wars. Strengthened by
the popularity of neo-Freudianism coming out of WWII, the young Turks won the leadership of the
APA and turned it into an activist organization. Deutsch’s letter and the optional readings suggest
that social psychiatry’s liberal agenda faced opposition from both Marxists and ultra-conservatives
during the Cold War.

Study questions: What ironies does Gerald Grob find in the story of the conflict within the APA
after WWII? What is the central problem with being human according to Grob? How does that
problem affect the events that he describes in his article?

What, according to Grob, is “social psychiatry”? How does it compare and contrast with “mental
hygiene”? How does the philosophy of social psychiatry appear in the film Let There Be Light?

What aspects of the film Snake Pit reflect a reformist view of the mental health system and social
problems in general? What aspects of the film Snake Pit reflect a radical view of the mental health
system and social problems in general? What aspects of the film Snake Pit reflect a reactionary
view of the mental health system and social problems in general?

Required Reading:
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Fishbein, Leslie. 1978. The Snake Pit (1948): The Sexist Nature of Sanity. American Quarterly 30:
641-665.
Grob, Gerald N. 1986. Psychiatry and Social Activism: The Politics of a Specialty in Postwar
America. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 60: 477-501.
Grob, Gerald N. . 1994. The Mad Among Us. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (pp.
202-207).
Beam, Alex. 2001. Gracefully Insane, pp. 73-85.
Misc articles, obituaries etc. in Blackboard [required readings are noted and the rest are optional]

Optional Reading:
Auerback, Alfred. 1963. The Anti-Mental Health Movement. American Journal of Psychiatry 120: 105-111.
Deutsch, Albert. 1948. Shame of the States. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Friedman, Lawrence J. Menninger: The Family and the Clinic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990.
Gabbard, Glen O. and Krin Gabbard. 1988. Psychiatry and the Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, pp. 68-71.
Grob, Gerald N. 1991. From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapters 4-5.
Grob, Gerald N. . 1994. The Mad Among Us. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chapter 9.
Herman, Ellen. 1995. The Romance of American Psychology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
(Chapters 5-8).
The Manchurian Candidate (film or book)
Nicholson, Michelle M. 2004. The Lunatic Fringe Strikes Back: Conservative Opposition to the Alaska
Mental Health Bill of 1956. In Robert D. Johnston (Ed.), The Politics of Healing: Histories of
Alternative Medicine in Twentieth-Century North America. New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Steven J. Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. (Chapter 7).
Ward, Mary Jane. 1946. The Snake Pit. New York: Random House.
Ward, Mary Jane. 1946, May. The Snake Pit. Reader’s Digest, pp. 130-168

Wednesday, March 10th Mid Term Exam (and showing of Harvey?)

----spring break----

Wednesday, March 24th Psychotherapeutic Optimism: Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

and the Rose Garden
Required Reading:

Green, Hanna [Greenberg, Joanne]. 1963/1989. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. New York:
New American Library.
Hale, Nathan G. 1995 The rise and crisis of psychoanalysis in the United States : Freud and the
Americans, 1917-1985. New York: Oxford University Press. (pp. 266-269; 330-331).
Constance M. McGovern. "Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda"; American National Biography Online Feb.
2000.
Gracefully Insane, pp. 120-122.

Optional Reading:
Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda. 1948. Notes on the Development of Treatment of Schizophrenics by
Psychoanalytic Therapy, Psychiatry, 11: 263-273.
Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda. 1982. "Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Discusses the 'Rose Garden' Case,"
Psychiatry, 45: 128-136.
Hornstein, Gail A. 2000. To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-
Reichman. New York: Free Press. Chapters on INPYRG. Good expert of the day resource.
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Film: Spellbound
Rubin, Theodore I. 1961/1998. Lisa and David. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Film: David and Lisa

Wednesday, March 31st Bringing McLean Into the 20th Century; the Lobotomy
Required Reading:
Gracefully Insane, chapter 7. (see “study questions” on Bb for questions on this chapter)
Grob, Gerald N. 1994. The Mad Among Us. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (pp. 223-
234).
Gracefully Insane, pp. 85-91.
Grob, Gerald N. 1991. From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 129-134.
Psychosurgery (from Life, 1947).
The Lobotomist (WGBH documentary) to be shown in class

Optional Reading:
Dully, Howard. (2007). My Lobotomy. New York: Crown. Good reading for expert
of the day.
El-Hai, Jack. (2005). The Lobotomist . Good reading for expert of the day.
Pressman, Jack. 1998. Last Resort. New York: Cambridge University Press. Good
reading for expert of the day.
Tillotson (1938) on the “total push method.”

Wednesday, April 7th Challenges to Psychiatric Authority: Szasz and Rosenhan

Study questions: You read three reviews of Titicut Follies that disagree dramatically. How might
the editorial views of the three publications contribute to those differences? What can you find out
about the authors? After watching the film, what parts of each review do you agree and/or disagree
with? How did Frederick Wiseman make this film? Why did he make the film? What scenes in
the film would Szasz appreciate the most? What scenes in the film would Rosenhan appreciate the
most?
To Be Shown in Class: Titicut Follies

Required Reading:

Coles, Gill, et. al., [reviews of Titicut Follies]

Grob, Gerald N. 1991. From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Chapter 11, pp. 273-274; 279-292.
1982 NYTimes Op Ed by Szasz “Lady in the Box”
Self, Will. “Thomas Szasz: Shrinking from Psychiatry”
Rosenhan, David. 1973. On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 250-258.
Thurber, “Unicorn in the Garden”

Optional Reading:
Anderson, Carolyn and Thomas W. Benson. 1991. Documentary Dilemmas: Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut
Follies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Benson, Thomas W. and Carolyn Anderson. 1989. Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Donaldson, Kenneth. Insanity Inside Out.
Scheff, Thomas J. 1966. Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Spitzer, Robert L. 1975. On Pseudoscience in Science, Logic in Remission, and Psychiatric Diagnosis: A
Critique of Rosenhan’s “On Being Sane in Insane Places. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84: 442-
[Link] expert of the day reading.
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Slater, Lauren. 2004. Opening Skinner’s Box. New York: Norton. (Chapter 3).Good (but odd) expert of
the day resource, combined with one critique of Slater obtained from the wwweb.
Szasz, Thomas. 1960. The Myth of Mental Illness. American Psychologist 15: 113-118.

Wednesday, April 14th Are Homosexuals Mentally Ill?

Study question: The life of Evelyn Hooker repeats a familiar theme in this course. It is:
socioeconomic and political events shape the scientific and clinical viewpoints of psychologists and
psychiatrists. In Hooker’s case, what socioeconomic and political events helped prepare her for her
role of challenger to the psychological consensus about homosexuality?
Required Reading:

Minton, Henry L. 2002. Departing from Deviance; A History of Homosexual Rights and
Emancipatory Science in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 238-264.
Obituaries for Judd Marmor
Evelyn Hooker, “Reflections” (1993)
Obituary of Evelyn Hooker (1996)
“Gay Dad” by Armistead Maupin (2002)
Opus cartoon on reconditioning homosexuals
Joanne Meyerowitz biography of Evelyn Hooker in Notable American Women.

Optional Reading/Listening:
Harris, Ben. 2003. Review of Henry L. Minton, Departing from Deviance; A History of Homosexual Rights
and Emancipatory Science in America. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 58,
489-490.
Minton, Henry L. 2002. Departing from Deviance; A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory
Science in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 2.
NPR radio program on removing homosexuality from the DSM

Wednesday., April 21st Anti-Psychiatry: Radical Visions

Study questions: In Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, Marxist critiques of social institutions and
policies were much more popular than in the U.S. Are Laing’s views of mental illness influenced
by Marxism? How is Ken Loach’s film a Marxist critique of the family and capitalist society?
Please see the “notes on Family Life” for more study questions.

Film to be Shown: Family Life

Required Reading:
Diski, Jenny. 2009. The Sixties (Chapter 6: Changing Our Minds). New York: Picador
Laing, R. D. and Aaron Esterson, 1970. Sanity Madness and the Family. New York: Penguin, pp.
11-14; 31-51.
Madness Network News, Spring 1977 (selections)
Notes on Family Life (in folder with the film’s title)
Vonnegut, Mark. 1974, April. Why I want to bite R. D. Laing. Harpers, pp. 90-92.

Optional Reading:
Burston, Daniel. 1996. The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R. D. Laing. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. A chapter of this would be good expert reading.
Showalter, Elaine. 1985. “Women, Madness, and the Family.” Chapter 9 of Elaine Showalter, The Female
Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980. New York: Pantheon. good expert
reading.
Sigal, Clancy. 1976. Zone of the Interior. New York: Thomas Crowell. Ditto if you like fiction.
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Wednesday, April 28th Anti-Psychiatry?: The Feminine Mystique

Required Reading:
.
Beam, Gracefully Insane, pp. 151-158
Herman, Ellen. 1995. The Romance of American Psychology. Berkeley, CA: U. of California
Press, pp. 276-292 (selections from Chapter 10).
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar.
Find one article in Ladies Home Journal from 1939-1956, scan it, post on Discussion Board by 9
am on 4/29, and be prepared to report on it
Possible film to show in class: Discovery Channel documentary circa 2004 on Plath

Optional Reading:
Buhle, Mari Jo. 1998. Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psycho-
analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Chapter 6).
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Preface, Chapter 5 (and letters written to her)
Herman, Romance, pp. 292-303.
Horowitz, Daniel. 1996. Rethinking Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique: Labor
Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold War America. American Quarterly 48: 1-
[Link] expert of the day reading.
Meyerson, Abraham. Review of anti-feminist psychology book and ANB bio of
Meyerson.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. 1993. Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar
Mass Culture, 1946-1958. Journal of American History 1455-1482. ditto
Showalter, Elaine. 1985. The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture,
1830-1980. New York: Pantheon, Chapter 8.
Tomes, Nancy. 1994. Feminist Histories of Psychiatry, in Discovering the History of
Psychiatry, ed. Mark S. Micale and Roy Porter, 348-383. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press. excellent review essay asking the question, “were women
victimized by psychiatry throughout history?”.
Readings on Plath and Sexton (see Beam, pp. 253-254).

Wednesday, May 5th Girl, Interrupted

Class will meet at Professor Harris’ home (directions will be provided), 2:30-4:30.
Required:
Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted (1993) and the film of that name (on reserve)
Beam, Alex. 2001. Gracefully Insane. Chapter 10: “Diagnosis: Hippiephrenia”

Optional:
Two articles about this film and its actors.

Monday, May 10th Term Paper Drop off in Conant 304, 1-2 pm

FINAL EXAM: Monday, May 17 from 10:30-12:30.