100 Books Like Madness in Civilization

The abuse of power is a running theme in the history of psychiatry. Psychiatry has often been wielded to control those who challenge the status quo. This book neatly and creatively unearths one such attempt to stifle dissent by labeling it mad.

Focusing on a mental hospital in Michigan, Jonathan Metzl shows how schizophrenia was harnessed to pathologize Black Civil Rights activism in the 1960s. In the process, schizophrenia was transformed from a condition mainly diagnosed in whites to one that stressed violence and aggression and was mainly diagnosed in black males. I especially love how Metzl punctuates his historical analysis with poignant stories of individuals caught up in this dark period of racism in psychiatry. 

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 past, its lessons echo to this day.

I am a sucker for books that bridge the uncanny valley between the past and present to answer the question, how in the hell did this happen? Lobotomy is the most infamous of all psychiatry “treatments.” From our perch in the present, it is hard to fathom the popularity of such a barbaric practice.

In this book, Jack Pressman tells the chilling story of lobotomy but does so in a way that stresses how normal, and even banal, it was for psychiatrists of the day. Faced with overcrowded mental hospitals, psychiatrists turned to lobotomy out of desperation, willfully swallowing its hype. And with their probing transorbital ice picks, they perpetrated horrific abuses on their patients in what might be the darkest moment in psychiatry’s past. 

Most of us seek out history with an eye to the present. In this book, Allan Horwitz explains the emergence of our current brand of psychiatry. Sometimes called “biomedical psychiatry,” this is the psychiatry of the DSM and ever-rising rates of mental health diagnoses, of Prozac and psychopharmaceutical drugs, of chemical imbalances and neurological accounts of mental disorders.

Horwitz shows how the shift to this present was driven not by science but by professional crisis. In the 1970s, besieged by critics and exposés of their failings, psychiatrists ditched the Freudian-inspired psychodynamic model for one that emphasized diagnosis and medication. But the science was always dubious, and the upshot of this shift is a culture awash in psychiatric diagnoses for seemingly everything.  

I found this book perfect for my dual interests in mental illness and cinema; it is current (copyright 2023) and engaging. Charney is a practicing child psychiatry who brings extensive clinical experience to his writing. He also loves films, and this comes across in this book.

I especially like the numerous film grabs that illustrate this interesting volume, and it was especially interesting to see another therapist’s reactions to dozens of films I have watched and loved.

I really bonded with Tess. She's loyal and brave and won't back down when a friend's in need. I like the puzzle of the mystery and trying to figure out if there's a supernatural element or not.

Tess's vulnerability catches my heart, though: her troubled childhood leads her to see herself as less than her true worth compared to the healthy, faith-filled family she's married into. I'm passionate about recognizing our true, God-given worth and breaking free from the lies that hold us back.

This is another novel written expressly for teenagers, and all the better for it.

Inflected by the author’s own autobiographical experiences—like Craig, the novel’s narrator, Vizzini spent a week in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager—It’s Kind of a Funny Story was the first work of fiction I’d read that articulated the adolescent experience through the language of mental health. It was here that I learned “depression” isn’t an abstracted emotion but the very real neurochemical imbalance that impels Craig to call the suicide hotline after abandoning his SSRIs.

There’s an uncanny familiarity to the circumstances of Craig’s breakdown—namely in how he struggles to remain above water at a famously rigorous college preparatory high school—and a fundamental earnestness to his story’s confessions that gilds even its grimmest moments with a fifteen-year-old's sense of impressionable wonder.

Susanne Paola Antonetta’s first book, Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir taught me how memoir can be compiled through multiple lenses—one that invites into the author’s self-view and another through which you can learn about place and environmental degradation. With two (or more) questions, who-I-am becomes complicated and textured. Antonetta’s new The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here illustrates that understanding ourselves comes only through looking at those selves through other texts, other people, our current understanding of ourselves, science, place, and our childhood’s vision of the world.

Antonetta takes quantum entanglement, her grandmother’s Christian Science beliefs, and her own account of spending summers at the shore in a small hut with her family whose history of mental health—and professional accomplishments—is complexly textured. In a section called “The Problem of the Past,” Antonetta describes the behavior of photon particles. In the double-slit experiment, if you send one beam of light through… show more.

I’m a BIG Greg Iles fan—he (in my opinion) writes a lot like Stephen King, but instead of horror, leans more into the twisty-thriller category that I find electrifying.

For those unfamiliar with Iles’ work, this book is a great place to start, as it has the right amount of everything that makes a great read: twists and turns, a likable protagonist in an awful situation, and page-turning goodness that will keep you glued to the couch. It explores the dark side of obsession, giving this story that "erotic" label that pushed me toward my new genre.

A ground-breaking memoir, this book recounts Elyn Saks’s journey through the depths of schizophrenia while forging a remarkable career as a legal scholar. Saks, diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia during her college years, offers an unflinching account of her psychotic breaks, hospitalizations, and the constant battle to stay grounded in reality.

Yet, her story is one of resilience and hope, showing that a fulfilling life with schizophrenia is possible. Saks’s narrative is both personal and educational, offering insight into the lived experience of mental illness while advocating for compassion and understanding. Her bravery was what captured my attention. Her no-holds-barred personal story gives hope to everyone who has been given a devastating diagnosis of schizophrenia.