Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus Repression, Transformation and Assistance

Drawing on a broad range of approaches in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, history, philosophy, medicine and nursing, Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus exposes psychiatric practices that are mobilized along the continuum of repression, transformation and assistance. It critically examines taken for granted psychiatric practices both past and current, shedding light on the often political nature of psychiatry and reconceptualizing its central and sensitive issues through the radical theory of figures such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Goffman, and Szasz. As such, this ground-breaking collection embraces a broad understanding of psychiatric practices and engages the reader in a critical understanding of their effects, challenging the discipline’s altruistic rhetoric of therapy and problematizing the ways in which this is operationalized in practice. A comprehensive exploration of contested psychiatric practices in healthcare settings, this interdisciplinary volume brings together recent scholarship from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia, to provide a rich array of theoretical tools with which to engage with questions related to psychiatric power, discipline and control, while theorizing their workings in creative and imaginative ways.

Introduction, Jean Daniel Jacob, Amélie Perron, Dave Holmes; Part I Repression; Chapter 1 Varieties of Psychiatric Criticism, Thomas Szasz; Chapter 2 Censoring Violence: Censorship and Critical Research in Forensic Psychiatry, Dave Holmes, Stuart J. Murray; Chapter 3 The “Rhetoric of Rights” in Mental Health: Between Equality, Responsibility and Solidarity, Emmanuelle Bernheim; Chapter 4 Power, Control and Coercion: Exploring Hyper-Masculine Performativity by Private Guards in a Psychiatric Ward Setting, Matthew S. Johnston, Jennifer M. Kilty; Chapter 5 Containment Practices in Psychiatric Care, Eimear Muir-Cochrane, Adam Gerace; Chapter 6 Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: An Object of Study in the Creation of an Illness, David Healy, Joanna Le Noury; Chapter 7 Delinquent Life: Forensic Psychiatry and Neoliberal Biopolitics, Stuart J. Murray, Sarah Burgess; Part II Transformation; Chapter 8 Structural Othering: Towards an Understanding of Place in the Construction of Disruptive Subjectivities, Jean Daniel Jacob, Amélie Perron, Pascale Corneau; Chapter 9 When You Try to Speak Truth to Power: What Happens if the Powerful Turn Off Their Hearing Aids?, Paula J. Caplan; Chapter 10 Mainstreaming the Mentally Ill, Jem Masters, Trudy Rudge, Sandra West; Chapter 11 Legally-coerced Consent to Treatment in the Criminal Justice System, Jennifer A. Chandler; Chapter 12 Psy Policing: The Borderlands of Psychiatry and Security, Rachel Jane Liebert; Part III Assistance; Chapter 13 Twenty-first-century “Snake Oil” Salesmanship: Contemporary Care of the Suicidal Person in Formal Mental Health Care, John R. Cutcliffe, Sanaz Riahi; Chapter 14 Sex Offender Therapy: Collusion, Confession and Game-Playing, Dave Mercer; Chapter 15 Shock Therapies as Intensification of the War against Madness in Hamburg, Germany: 1930-1943, Thomas Foth; Chapter 16 American Medical Psychiatry: A Contemporary Case of Lysenkoism, David H. Jacobs; Chapter 17 The Evolution of Sex Offender Treatment: From Confinement to Consent, Natasha M. Knack, J. Paul Fedoroff;

Dave Holmes is Professor and University Research Chair in Forensic Nursing in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is co-editor of Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare, Abjectly Boundless: Boundaries, Bodies and Health Work and (Re)Thinking Violence in Healthcare Settings. Jean Daniel Jacob is Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Amélie Perron is Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, at the University of Ottawa, Canada and co-editor of (Re)Thinking Violence in Healthcare Settings.