Liah Greenfeld is University Professor and Professor of Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology at Boston University.
Mind, Modernity, Madness displays an astonishing level of
research...Greenfeld's book most persuasively demonstrates the lack
of consensus in the scientific community and beyond, over the
causes, treatment and prevalence of schizophrenia and manic
depression, both in America and worldwide...Liah Greenfeld's call
for a broader understanding of the role of culture in the growth of
the illnesses of schizophrenia and manic depression seems perfectly
timed to join the debate over the balance between science and
culture in the diagnosis and treatment of these complex
illnesses.
*MAKE: A Literary Magazine*
Liah Greenfeld has written a book of weight (figuratively and
literally) and power. It is an avalanche that pulls the reader with
it into a new landscape.
*Charles Lindholm, Boston University*
Explaining madness in cultural terms is what makes Greenfeld's book
so audacious. A classical parallel would be with Durkheim's attempt
to explain suicide through sociological categories. Her reasoning
is strong; the data extensive; the conclusions counterintuitive.
The book represents a triumph of imaginative thought.
*Peter Baehr, Lingnan University*
What most distinguishes Greenfeld's model of the mind from so much
else in the field is that she brings together biological and
cultural approaches to mental illness inclusively rather than
exclusively, in a way that enlarges rather than diminishes both.
While accepting the biological reality of major mental illnesses,
her analysis is focused not simply on the brain, in a reductive
sense, but on the mind as a product of experience and learning as
well as biology. Likewise, she applies cultural concepts to
psychiatry not in the reductive, purely social-constructionist
manner of Laing, Foucault, and Szasz, but so as to foster
understanding of cultural and historical variations in the
incidence and expression of mental illness that biology alone
cannot explain.
*Harold J. Bursztajn, M.D., Harvard Medical School*
Greenfeld offers a sweeping, sociologically grounded theory of the
relationship between madness, mind, and society…It is a significant
contribution to understanding mental illness and the more general
interplay between mind, self, and society.
*Choice*
[A] magnificent sweep of several fields…Those apt to gain most from
Greenfeld’s remarkable tome are biological psychiatrists,
legislators, and community leaders. Physicians, behavioral
scientists, futurists, parents, and academicians will find the read
exhilarating and useful. Cultural psychiatrists, ethnopsychiatric
investigators, and psychiatric epidemiologists--those least apt to
realize totally new understandings--will still find their
comprehensions expanded in unanticipated ways.
*American Journal of Psychiatry*
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