The protest psychosis : how schizophrenia became a Black disease PDF
Preview The protest psychosis : how schizophrenia became a Black disease
More praise for The Protest Psychosis “Jonathan Metzl offers a richly textured story of the confluence of race, psychiatric di- agnoses, and social upheaval. The result is an absorbing account of how schizophrenia became a highly racialized label.” —Earl Lewis, author of Love on Trial and To Make Our World Anew, and provost, Emory University “The Protest Psychosis is the most important book on schizophrenia in years. Jonathan Metzl shows how schizophrenia was transformed from a largely white, middle-class, nonmenacing disorder to one that is widely perceived as dangerous and threatening, precisely at the time of the U.S. civil rights movement. Metzl demonstrates convinc- ingly that fears associated with urban violence and the rise of black power in the 1960s became an essential part of the very definition of schizophrenia. —Byron Good, author of Medicine, Rationality, and Experience and professor of medical anthropology, Harvard Medical School “The Protest Psychosis offers a compelling and expertly crafted study of the ways in which racial tensions are structured into medical interactions and shape its disease cate- gories. This innovative historical portrait of the interaction of race and medicine should provoke deep reflection on how racial meanings become attached to docility, rage, and aggression, and become reified in psychiatric nomenclature and practice.” —Keith Wailoo, author of Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health “In this riveting book, Jonathan Metzl anatomizes the ways in which social forces, cul- tural anxieties, and political protests shaped schizophrenia as a black disease. The story that emerges is fascinating and heartbreaking from the first word to the last.” —Emily Martin, author of Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture “The Protest Psychosis is an incisive and unexpectedly riveting book, equal parts medi- cal history, social criticism, and investigative journalism. A very impressive work of scholarship.” —Carl Elliott, author of Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream THE PROTEST PSYCHOSIS The Protest Psychosis How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease Jonathan M. Metzl Beacon Press • Boston Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892 www.beacon.org Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. © 2009 by Jonathan M. Metzl All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992. Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Metzl, Jonathan, The protest psychosis : how schizophrenia became a black disease / Jonathan M. Metzl. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8070-8592-9 (alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Mental health—Case studies. 2. Schizophrenia— Case studies. I. Title. RC451.5.N4.M48 2009 362.196’8980089960973—dc22 2009016610 To Rumpa Contents Preface The Protest Psychosis ix part I Ionia Chapter 1 Homicidal 3 Chapter 2 Ionia 6 part II Alice Wilson Chapter 3 She Tells Very Little about Her Behavior Yet Shows a Lot 19 Chapter 4 Loosening Associations 25 Chapter 5 Like a Family 45 part III Octavius Greene Chapter 6 The Other Direction 51 Chapter 7 Categories 56 Chapter 8 Octavius Greene Had No Exit Interview 70 Chapter 9 The Persistence of Memory 73 part IV Caeser Williams Chapter 10 Too Close for Comfort 77 Chapter 11 His Actions Are Determined Largely by His Emotions 84 Chapter 12 Revisionist Mystery 91 Chapter 13 A Racialized Disease 95 Chapter 14 A Metaphor for Race 109 part V Rasheed Karim Chapter 15 Turned Loose 131 Chapter 16 Deinstitutionalization 133 Chapter 17 Raised in a Slum Ghetto 137 Chapter 18 Power, Knowledge, and Diagnostic Revision 145 Chapter 19 Return of the Repressed 160 Chapter 20 Rashomon 167 Chapter 21 Something Else Instead 171 part VI Remnants Chapter 22 Locked Away 175 Chapter 23 Diversity 177 Chapter 24 Inside 178 Chapter 25 Remnants 186 Chapter 26 Controllin’ the Planet 193 Chapter 27 Conclusion 199 Acknowledgments 213 Notes 216 Index 242
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