How the brain lost its mind : sex, hysteria, and the riddle of mental illness / Allan H. Ropper, MD and Brian David Burrell.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House, [2019]Description: xiv, 242 pages : illustration ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780735214552
- 0735214557
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 612.82 R785 | Available | 33111009695848 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A noted neurologist challenges the widespread misunderstanding of brain disease and mental illness.
How the Brain Lost Its Mind tells the rich and compelling story of two confounding ailments, syphilis and hysteria, and the extraordinary efforts to confront their effects on mental life. How does the mind work? Where does madness lie, in the brain or in the mind? How should it be treated?
Throughout the nineteenth century, syphilis--a disease of mad poets, musicians, and artists--swept through the highest and lowest rungs of European society like a plague. Known as "the Great Imitator," it could produce almost any form of mental or physical illness, and it would bring down a host of famous and infamous characters--among them Guy de Maupassant, Vincent van Gogh, the Marquis de Sade, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Al Capone. It was the first truly psychiatric disease and it filled asylums to overflowing. At the same time, an outbreak of bizarre behaviors resembling epilepsy, but with no identifiable source in the body, strained the diagnostic skills of the great neurologists. It was referred to as hysteria.
For more than a century, neurosyphilis stood out as the archetype of a brain-based mental illness, fully understood but largely forgotten, and today far from gone. Hysteria, under many different names, remains unexplained and epidemic. These two conditions stand at opposite poles of the current debate over the role of the brain in mental illness. Hysteria led Freud to insert sex into psychology. Neurosyphilis led to the proliferation of mental institutions. The problem of managing the inmates led to the abuse of lobotomy and electroshock therapy, and ultimately the overuse of psychotropic drugs.
Today we know that syphilitic madness was a destructive disease of the brain while hysteria and, more broadly, many varieties of mental illness reside solely in the mind. Or do they? Afflictions once written off as "hysterical" continue to elude explanation. Addiction, alcoholism, autism, ADHD, Tourette syndrome, depression, and sociopathy, though regarded as brain-based, have not been proven to be so.
In these pages, the authors raise a host of philosophical and practical questions. What is the difference between a sick mind and a sick brain? If we understood everything about the brain, would we understand ourselves? By delving into an overlooked history, this book shows how neuroscience and brain scans alone cannot account for a robust mental life, or a deeply disturbed one.
"The remarkable, intertwined histories of neurology, psychiatry, neurosyphilis, and hysteria, and the derailing of a coordinated approach to mental illness. In 1882, Jean-Martin Charcot was the premiere physician in Paris, having just established a neurology clinic at the infamous Salpetriere Hospital, a place that was called a "grand asylum of human misery." Assessing the dismal conditions, he quickly set up to upgrade the facilities, and in doing so, revolutionized the treatment of mental illness. Many of Charcot's patients had neurosyphilis (the advanced form of syphilis), a disease of mad poets, novelists, painters, and musicians, and a driving force behind the overflow of patients in Europe's asylums. A sexually transmitted disease, it is known as "the great imitator" since its symptoms resemble those of almost any biological disease or mental illness. It is also the perfect lens through which to peel back the layers to better understand the brain and the mind. Yet, Charcot's work took a bizarre turn when he brought mesmerism--hypnotism--into his clinic, abandoning his pursuit of the biological basis of illness in favor of the far sexier and theatrical treatment of female "hysterics," whose symptoms mimic those seen in brain disease, but were elusive in origin. This and a general fear of contagion set the stage for Sigmund Freud, whose seductive theory, Freudian analysis, brought sex and hysteria onto the psychiatrist couch, leaving the brain behind. How The Brain Lost Its Mind tells this rich and compelling story, and raises a host of philosophical and practical questions. Are we any closer to understanding the difference between a sick mind and a sick brain? The real issue remains: where should neurology and psychiatry converge to explore not just the brain, but the nature of the human psyche?"-- Provided by publisher.
"The remarkable, intertwined histories of neurology, psychiatry, neurosyphyllis, and hysteria, and the derailing of a coordinated approach to mental illness"-- Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-228) and index.