Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness - Rilegato

Gold, Joel; Gold, Ian

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1439181551 ISBN 13: 9781439181553

Casa editrice: Free Pr, 2014

Riassunto

What if you woke up with the alarming suspicion that you were being watched?

One day in 2003, a patient unlike any other that Dr. Joel Gold had seen before was admitted to his unit at Bellevue Hospital. This man claimed he was being filmed constantly and that his life was being broadcast around the world likeThe Truman Show—the 1998 film depicting a man who is unknowingly living out his life as the star of a popular soap opera. Over the next few years, Dr. Gold saw a number of patients suffering from what he and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, began calling the “Truman Show delusion,” launching them on a quest to understand the nature of this particular phenomenon, of delusions more generally, and of madness itself.

The current view of delusions is that they are the result of biology gone awry, of neurons in the brain misfiring. In contrast, the Golds argue that delusions are the result of the interaction between the brain and the social world. By exploring the major categories of delusion through fascinating case studies and marshaling the latest research in schizophrenia, the brothers reveal the role of culture and the social world in the development of psychosis—delusions in particular.Suspicious Minds presents a groundbreaking new vision of just how dramatically our surroundings can influence our brains.

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Recensione:

“Incisive [and] insightful. . . . [C]lear, witty, and engaging. . . . [T]he brothers Gold propose an intriguing new hypothesis to account for delusions: a malfunctioning “Suspicion System,” in which the cognitive system that has evolved to alert us to possible danger breaks down, becoming so overloaded by an abundance of real and perceived external threats that it can no longer discriminate between justifiable wariness and paranoia.” (The Boston Globe)

“The book amounts to nothing less than a frontal—or perhaps pre-frontal—challenge to the dominant view of modern psychiatry, which looks to neuroscience to explain disorders of the mind. . . . Suspicious Minds comes alive with often-provocative notions. [Joel and Ian Gold] pepper the book with often fascinating case histories of the deluded, which provide more proof that no fantasist can hope to match the wonders—and horrors—of the human mind.” (Washington Post)

"A dual broadside: against a psychiatric profession that has become infatuated with neuroscience as part of its longstanding attempt to establish itself as 'real medicine,' and against a culture that has become too networked for its own good." (New York Times Book Review)

"Suspicious Minds is an important book. It's sharp, compassionate and incredibly well researched. It gives a window into current psychiatric debates, and it builds toward a theory that is at least plausible and definitely thought provoking." (The Globe and Mail)

"Evidently, [the Gold brothers] hypothesize in a droll Oliver Sacksian tone, culture has a great deal of influence on trends in madness." (The Village Voice)

"A fascinating and intimate portrait of psychosis." (Scientific American)

"Juxtaposing recent research on schizophrenia with page-turning case studies of these paranoid patients, the Golds argue that psychotic delusions (not to mention mesmeric movie plots) are the result of interactions between the brain and the sociocultural world, and they bring to light the discipline-altering fact that culture has a role to play in the development of psychopathology generally. . . . [A] contrarian, insightful, and important book. . . . [Gold and Gold's] analysis of culture-linked paranoia comprises an effective argument that our seemingly endless struggle to align our society with our more enlightened ideals may be a fight for our very minds." (The New Republic)

“Suspicious Minds offers lessons to anyone interested in the complexity of the mental health field’s future.” (New York Post)

"The Golds reveal how the categories of delusion map onto the social world, and they raise questions about the future of madness in a social world that’s gone global in the age of the Internet. The result is a view that breaks the bonds of contemporary psychiatry by showing that madness is as much a social disease as it is biological." (The Philadelphia Tribune)

"A provocative new perspective on the diagnosis, and therefore treatment, of mental illness." (Kirkus Reviews)

L'autore:

Joel Gold, MD, is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine and was an attending psychiatrist in the department of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center for nine years. Joel is on the faculty at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education and has a private practice in Manhattan. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

Ian Gold, PhD, is the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy and Psychiatry at McGill University. He earned a BA and MA in philosophy from McGill University and a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University. He lives in Montreal with his family.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Free Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1439181551
• ISBN 13: 9781439181553
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 321