Pathology and the Postmodern

Dwight Fee is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Middlebury College, Vermont CONTRIBUTORS OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA: Vivian Burr, University of Huddersfield Trevor Butt, University of Huddersfield Rom Harr[ac]e, Linacre College, Oxford University Jane M Ussher, University of Western Sydney

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION The Broken Dialogue - Dwight Fee Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience PART TWO: PSYCHIATRIC DISCOURSE AND MENTAL LIFE IN POSTMODERN SPACES Escape from Insanity - Simon Gottschalk `Mental Disorder' in the Postmodern Moment Performing Methods - Jackie Orr History, Hysteria and the New Science of Psychiatry The Project of Pathology - Dwight Fee Reflexivity and Depression in Elizabeth Wurtzel's /f003Prozac Nation PART THREE: PATHOLOGY AND SELFHOOD: NEW AND CONTESTED SUBJECTIVITIES The Self - Kenneth J Gergen Transfiguration by Technology Modernists at Heart? Postmodern Artist Breakdowns and the Question of Identity - Mark Freeman A Dangerous Symbolic Mobility - Janet Wirth-Cauchon Narratives of Borderline Personality Disorder Is it Me or Is it Prozac? Antidepressants and the Construction of Self - John P Hewitt, Michael R Fraser and Leslie Beth Berger PART FOUR: TOWARD NEW APPROACHES: EPISTEMOLOGY, RESEARCH, POLITICS Psychological Distress and Postmodern Thought - Vivian Burr and Trevor Butt Women's Madness - Jane Ussher A Material-Discursive-Intrapsychic Approach Grammar and the Brain - S R Sabat and Rom Harr[ac]e Does a Story Need a Theory? Understanding the Methodology of Narrative Therapy - Fred Newman

`An exciting, challenging and thought-provoking book which many have waited years for. This is an excellent series of edited accounts which expand and invigorate the dialogue about the history, phenomenology, and contemporary experience of mental illness in a sociohistorical context that is in several respects increasingly hostile to the tenets of "social constructionism" a perspective fundermental to such discussions' - Counselling Psychology Review `This is a wonderful volume, powerfully written, timely, insightful, and filled with major pieces; the passion, intellectual rigor and sense of history found here promises to shape this field in the decades to come. This volume sets the agenda for the future' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois `A beautifully crafted manuscript which re-invigorates the rather stale debate between the traditionalists and the anti-psychiatry schools of thought.... For all those working in mental health arenas the journeying through this text will be highly rewarding indeed. Stick with it.' - Mental Health Care `This is a book which will apeal to those interested in theoretical debates rather than to practitioners who may find it heavey weather if they have not had the time or resources to engage with what are often quite difficult and often dense writings' - British Journal of Social Work `This book.. present[s] a clarity that is vivid.... This book would be a good place for psychiatrists to start' - British Journal of Psychiatry