Daniel B. Smith. Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination. New York: Penguin Press, 2007. 272 pp. $24.95 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-1594201103. Jerome Kagan. What Is Emotion? History, Measures, and Meanings. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 288 pp. $27.50 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0300124743. Emily Martin. Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. 384 pp. $45.00 (cloth). ISBN-13: 9780691004235. Joseph Cambray. Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. 168 pp. $23.95 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-1603441438. Barbara Ehrenreich. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009. 256 pp. $23.00 (cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0805087499
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 38 KB
- Volume
- 46
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
One of many recent books that raise important questions about modern psychiatric diagnoses and treatment, this examination of auditory hallucinations grew out of Daniel Smith's questions about the experiences of his father and his grandfather, both of whom heard voices. Only late in life did Smith's grandfather reveal his experience with benevolent voices that helped him make decisions. Smith suggests that this revelation, had it come earlier, might have helped his father, whose voices were more intrusive and commanding, and who was ashamed of experiences he considered a sign of mental illness. Although not primarily a historical study, Smith's book should appeal to historians interested in the shift that accompanied the secularization of modern culture and the rise of biomedical psychiatry since the eighteenth century-a shift from valuing to pathologizing such unusual experiences as seeing visions and hearing voices. Part of the book focuses on contemporary developments in the understanding of auditory experiences and on the British organization known as Hearing Voices Network, a contemporary source of support for the surprisingly large number of people who hear voices. But Smith also devotes considerable attention to several famous historical figures who experienced hearing voices as inspiration, especially Socrates, Joan of Arc, and Daniel Paul Schreber, each of whom serves as a case study in a chapter of the book. Schreber, of course, is well known as the subject of Freud's 1911 study of paranoia, based on Schreber's autobiography. Schreber's case illustrates the change in understanding of "hallucination" that accompanied the rise of medical psychiatry, a change that William James (1902) countered in his attempt "to shift the basis of interpretation of voices and visions from pathology to personal value," according to Smith (p. 207). Whether or not one agrees with Smith's arguments for a less pathologizing view of hearing voices, this book is an absorbing and thought-provoking read.