The History of Psychiatry

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

When that paper came out and we read it, i was taking an abnormal course, actually, at pepperdine university in malaboo. And as part of our course, we had to spend one day a week at camorio state hospital,. which is just up the pc h there, about forty five minutes drive. I mean, this place was like right out of one flew ot of the cuckoo's nest. And i realized then i didn't want to be a clinician. I wanted to be like an experimental psychologist, not a clinical psychologist in that big devise. Cause it was just so depressing to be there.

For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In episode 161 of The Michael Shermer Show, Dr. Shermer speaks with anthropologist Dr. Roy Richard Grinker about his book Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness which chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma — from the 18th century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Shermer and Grinker discuss: the DSM, ADHD, PTSD, the autism spectrum, schizophrenia, labels and stigma, neuroses vs. psychoses, mental vs. medical models, brain/mind dualism, blacks and drapetomania, homelessness and mental illness, and the future of madness and normalcy.