Book cover of The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America

Book description

In the years between 1900 and 1930, American psychiatrists transformed their profession from a marginal science focused primarily on the care of the mentally ill into a powerful discipline concerned with analyzing the common difficulties of everyday life. How did psychiatrists effect such a dramatic change in their profession's fortunes…

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1 author picked The Psychiatric Persuasion as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

No list on the dubious history of psychiatry would be complete without a book about psychiatry’s efforts to control women. This is a classic in this regard. Focusing on the first quarter of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Lunbeck shows how psychiatrists, in an effort to assert their relevance and professional authority, brought issues related to marriage, sexuality, and gender into their ambit.

This book is deft in revealing how psychiatrists wielded the power to define normality to pathologize nonconforming women and insinuate themselves into our most intimate spheres. Although the history that Lunbeck recounts is now a century in the…

From Owen's list on psychiatry’s troubled past.

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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

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