This book proposes to open up the debate on mental disorders, to get people interested and talking, and to get them thinking. For example, what is schizophrenia? Why is it so common? Why does it affect human beings and not animals? What might this tell us about our mind and body, language and creativity, music and religion? What are the boundaries between mental disorder and 'normality'? Is there a relationship between mental disorder and genius? These are some of the difficult but important questions that this book confronts, with the overarching aim of exploring what mental disorders can teach us about human nature and the human condition. Dr Neel Burton qualified in neuroscience and medicine from the University of London and is a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is the the author of several books, including a prize-winning textbook of psychiatry and a prize-winning self-help book for people with schizophrenia. He lives and teaches in Oxford.

This book argues that the experience of 'madness' is an integral part of what it is to be human, and that greater focus on subjective experiences can contribute to professional understandings and ways of helping those troubled by these experiences.

Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

A substantial fraction of the people around us suffer from personality disorders. To cope, they distort both their reality and ours. Their behavior can be baffling and puzzling, and worse, they often abuse those closest to them. The author presents a new and effective way for people to understand and recognize the three of these disorders that often lead to abusive behavior. Describing each using a single dynamic - an underlying motivation - rather than a list of behaviors is an easier way to grasp and deal with these disorders. He then describes the psychological defense mechanisms that stabilize the distorted world created by the disordered, and explains how substance abuse adds fuel to the fire of disordered behavior. he also offers the latest thinking on the prospects for improvement with treatment, and a realistic perspective on the likelihood that the disordered will choose this path.

The exact definition of "madness" remains elusive. There are difficulties in distinguishing the criminal from the mad or, more euphemistically, the mentally ill. Controversy has centered on the frightening potential possessed by the state to deprive of his rights the individual officially classified as mad. In this book, Wing, a psychiatrist of international repute, argues for a limited medical definition of mental illness, although he explains how even a doctor's professional judgment may often be influenced by social pressures. He compares concepts of madness prevalent in different types of society, examining, for example, the Marxist attitude towards the deviant in a socialist state. In a chapter which draws much from his own experience, he shows precisely how the apparatus of state medicine is used to suppress political dissidence in Russia. He also critically reviews the petty tyrannies prevalent in the West and tackles the difficult analytical problem of schizophrenia, a subject on which he is one of the most respected medical authorities. Reasoning about Madness is an original and important work in which the author successfully resists the temptation to erect "grand theories that explain nothing because they attempt to explain everything." Instead, he concentrates on developing a definition of madness which strikes a balance between the benefits of medical care and the preservation of human liberties.

From 1940 to 1945, forty thousand patients died in French psychiatric hospitals. The Vichy regime’s “soft extermination” let patients die of cold, starvation, or lack of care. But in Saint-Alban-sur-Limagnole, a small village in central France, one psychiatric hospital attempted to resist. Hoarding food with the help of the local population, the staff not only worked to keep patients alive but began to rethink the practical and theoretical bases of psychiatric care. The movement that began at Saint-Alban came to be known as institutional psychotherapy and would go on to have a profound influence on postwar French thought. In Disalienation, Camille Robcis grapples with the historical, intellectual, and psychiatric meaning of the ethics articulated at Saint-Alban by exploring the movement’s key thinkers, including François Tosquelles, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. Anchored in the history of one hospital, Robcis's study draws on a wide geographic context—revolutionary Spain, occupied France, colonial Algeria, and beyond—and charts the movement's place within a broad political-economic landscape, from fascism to Stalinism to postwar capitalism.

Originally published: London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2015.