U. of New Hampshire Course Puts Mental Illness in Historical Context

By EUGENE MCCORMACK

"Madness in America," University of New Hampshire

In this upper-level course, students learn how popular and professional concepts of mental illness have changed in the United States since the start of the 20th century.  In addition to reading the writings of therapists, former psychiatric patients, and historians, students watch Hollywood films and read novels that depict mental illness.

Benjamin Harris, a professor of psychology who has taught the class for eight years, says that students often have strong opinions about treatments for and causes of mental illnesses, but that the course design forces them to view everything from a historical perspective.   "Undergraduates are trained to look for truth," Mr. Harris says, "and I bend over backwards saying you need to understand the popularity of ideas in the 30s based on the 30s."

Students study how the Great Depression helped spur a debate in psychiatry over whether capitalism was responsible for a growth in mental illness, and how the 1950s helped influence the thoughts of some 1960s psychologists who believed that schizophrenia was a voyage toward less alienation that should be encouraged. They also study the evolution of the earlier debate over lobotomies and the more recent one over drug treatments.

Students also learn how films like The Snake Pit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and graphic documentaries influenced public opinion concerning state mental hospitals and the treatment of patients.

Students say:

Katie Floyd, a senior psychology major, wrote her final paper on how the often-frightening depiction of electroconvulsive therapy in film has influenced the public's attitude toward the procedure. This was the first course she had taken on the history of psychology, and she said she had to adjust to the idea of viewing events as neither strictly good nor bad. Still, on the topic of lobotomies, she says, "you wonder how they ever could have thought that was a good idea."

Reading list:

Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, by Alex Beam (Public Affairs, 2001); A Mind That Found Itself, by Clifford W. Beers (Longmans, Green, and Company, 1908); I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, by Joanne Greenberg (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964); One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (Viking, 1962).

Assignments:

Weekly writing assignments on required readings, as well as two midterm exams and a final exam. Each student must also give an oral presentation and write a term paper.

 

 

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Here is a description of the course as it will be taught next semester:

 

 

Psych 791 E01                                                                                         T, Th, 2-3:30 pm

UNH                                                                                                                               Spring 2008

Madness in America

 

Topic and Goal:

 

This course will examine how popular and professional concepts of mental illness have changed in America.  We will read the writings of former psychiatric patients as well as that of therapists, researchers, social critics, and historians of psychology and psych­i­atry.  We will also study motion pictures, documentaries, novels, auto­biographies, and biographies for their expression of cultural values, public attitudes, and popular views of mental health and illness. 

 

We will look at the impact of WWI and WWII on how people thought about madness and how it was treated.  One event from the 1960s that we will study is the removal of homosexuality from the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association.  Another is the rise and fall of the lobotomy (in the 1940s and 1950s).  Throughout the 20th century, we consider the question: have women been stigmatized by psychiatrists and psychologists?  The overall goal in the course is for students to see how psychiatric and psychological theories are shaped by historical events as well as scientific and medical research. 

 

Instructor:                  Prof. Ben Harris                                   office: Conant 304

                                    email: bh5@unh.edu                             tel: 862-4107

                                   

Examples of books that we will read:

 

Alex Beam, Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America’s Premier Mental Hospital. (New York: Public Affairs, 2001). [this is a popular history of McLean Hospital in Belmont Mass]

 

Clifford W.  Beers, A Mind That Found Itself. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981). [Originally published in 1908, this is the autobiog­raphy of a former patient who founded the mental health movement].

 

Hanna Green [Joanne Greenberg. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. (New York: New American Library, 1963/1989). [this is an autobiographical account of a schizophrenic adolescent who was successfully treated by the psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann].

 

Examples of films that we will see: Let There Be Light (1945), Snake Pit (1948),  Madness of King George (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), Girl, Interrupted (1999).

 

 

 

Note: this course is cross-listed in the American Studies Program.