Psychiatry regularly comes under attack as a way of caring for and controlling the mentally ill. Originally published in 1986, this title explores the history and theory of psychiatry to illuminate current practice at the time, and shows why mental health services had developed in particular ways. The book was invaluable for all those who needed to understand the problems and processes behind current psychiatric practice at the time – sociologists and psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors, social workers, and health service planners and administrators – and will still be of historical interest today.

Psychiatry regularly comes under attack as a way of caring for and controlling the mentally ill. Originally published in 1986, this title explores the history and theory of psychiatry to illuminate current practice at the time, and shows why mental health services had developed in particular ways. The book was invaluable for all those who needed to understand the problems and processes behind current psychiatric practice at the time – sociologists and psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors, social workers, and health service planners and administrators – and will still be of historical interest today.

Psychiatry regularly comes under attack as a way of caring for and controlling the mentally ill. Originally published in 1986, this title explores the history and theory of psychiatry to illuminate current practice at the time, and shows why mental health services had developed in particular ways. The book was invaluable for all those who needed to understand the problems and processes behind current psychiatric practice at the time - sociologists and psychologists, psychiatrists and doctors, social workers, and health service planners and administrators - and will still be of historical interest today.

John Haslam’s Illustrations of Madness, written in 1810, occupies a special place in psychiatric history, it was the first book-length account of one single psychiatric case written by a British psychiatrist. John Haslam, apothecary to London’s Bethlem Hospital, and a leading psychiatrist of the early-nineteenth century, details the case of James Tilly Matthews, who had been a patient in the hospital for some ten years. Matthews claimed he was sane, as did his friends and certain doctors. Haslam, on behalf of the Bethlem authorities, contended he was insane, and attempted to demonstrate this by presenting a detailed account of Matthew’s own delusional system, as far as possible in Matthew’s own words. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, Roy Porter’s Introduction to this facsimile reprint of an historic book goes beyond Haslam’s text to reveal the extraordinary psychiatric politics surrounding Matthew’s confinement and the court case it produced, leading up to Haslam’s dismissal from his post. Still relevant today, Haslam’s account can be used as material upon which to base a modern diagnosis of Matthew’s disorder.

"The first intellectual history of Foucault's early career"--

Originally published in 1992, Borderline presents a unique study of the disturbed mind. Professional psychologist Peter Chadwick draws upon his own personal experience of madness to provide a valuable exploration of the psychology of paranoia and schizophrenia. The book goes beyond a narrowly focused analytical approach to examine schizophrenia from as many perspectives as possible. Using participant observation, introspection, case study and experimental methods, Chadwick shows how paranoid and delusional thinking are only exaggerations of processes to be found in normal cognition. Impressed by the similarities between the thinking of mystics and psychotics, he argues that some forms of madness are closely related to profound mystical experience and intuition, but that these are expressed in a distorted form in the psychotic mind. He explores the many positive characteristics and capabilities of paranoid patients, providing a sympathetic account which balances the heavily negative constructions usually put on paranoia in the research literature. Borderline provides many novel insights into madness and raises important questions as to how psychosis and psychotics are to be evaluated. It will be essential reading for all practising professionals and students in clinical psychology and psychiatry, and for everyone involved in the treatment, understanding and management of schizophrenia.