Suffering Insanity: Psychoanalytic Essays on Psychosis
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : January 2004
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 200
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 20074
- ISBN 13 : 9781583918944
- ISBN 10 : 1583918949
Free UK Delivery over £25
This book explores the effects of the psychotic patient's suffering on carers and the culture of psychiatric services, and makes a powerful argument for considering care in the psychiatric services as a whole system.
Reviews and Endorsements
When madness is intolerable for sufferers, how do professional carers remain sane? Psychiatric institutions have always been places of fear and awe. Madness impacts on family, friends and relatives, but also those who provide a caring environment, whether in large institutions of the past, or community care in the present. This book explores the effects of the psychotic patient's suffering on carers and the culture of psychiatric services. Suffering Insanity is arranged as three essays. The first concerns staff stress in psychiatric services, exploring how the impact of madness demands a personal resilience as well as careful professional support, which may not be forthcoming. The second essay attempts a systematic review of the nature of psychosis and the intolerable psychotic experience, which the patient attempts to evade, and which the carer must confront in the course of daily work. The third essay returns to the impact of psychosis on the psychiatric services, which frequently configure in ways which can have serious and harmful effects on the provision of care. In particular, service may succumb to an unfortunate schismatic process resulting in sterile conflict, and to an assertively scientific culture, which leads to an unwitting depersonalisation of patients.
Suffering Insanity makes a powerful argument for considering care in the psychiatric services as a whole system that includes staff as well as patients; all need attention and understanding in order to deliver care in as humane a way as possible. All those working in the psychiatric services, both in large and small agencies and institutions, will appreciate that closer examination of the actual psychology and interrelations of staff, as well as patients, is essential and urgent.
Contents:
Introduction. Essay One: Helping to Help:Address to Practical Carers. Essay Two: How can it be Thought: Psychoanalytic Theories of Schizophrenia. Essay Three: Suffering the Mad: Countertransference in the Institutional Culture. Epilogue: Being psychotic, being a person. References.
About the Author(s)
R.D. Hinshelwood is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and currently holds the post of Professor of Psychoanalysis at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and previously was Clinical Director of the Cassel Hospital in Richmond. He is a past Chair of the Association of Therapeutic Communities. Professor Hinshelwood has written extensively on psychoanalysis and founded the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities (now Therapeutic Communities) in 1980 and the British Journal of Psychotherapy in 1984.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have given this title an average rating of 4 out of 5 from 2 review(s), add your own review for this title.
Sonny on 09/07/2011 06:46:00
(4 out of 5)
Eel on 07/07/2011 02:52:44
(4 out of 5)
That's really thinking out of the box. Thanks!
You may also like
Authenticity in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: The Work of Irma Brenman Pick
Irma Brenman Pick
Price £35.99
