Theater of Disorder: Patients, Doctors, and the Construction of Illness

by Brant Wenegrat

There are certain phenomena, such as hypnosis, hysteria, multiple personality disorder, recovered memory syndrome, claims of satanic ritual abuse, alien abduction syndrome, and culture-specific disorders that, although common, are difficult to explain completely.

The purpose of this volume is to apply a model of social relations to these phenomena in order to provide a different explanation for them. Wenegrat argues that they are socially constructed illness roles or purposive behavior patterns into which patients fall while receiving either unintentional or intentional cues during interactions with caretakers and authority figures. The application of the social-relations model raises some important, yet previously overlooked, questions about these phenomena. It also illustrates some important aspects of human nature and consciousness, places illness behaviors in their larger, cultural context, and shows the way to a new and different view of mental life.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Fishface]

VERY interesting read, about socially-mediated mental and physical health disorders from around the world. Overall well and cogently written. The author does undermine his own scholarly tone by not knowing the difference between "lie" and "lay" or "pedal" and "peddle," and by his inappropriate use of the hyphen. He also goes rather too far in framing all secondary gain from symptoms as more or less conscious/voluntary and tries to make, them, not secondary gains at all, but the main point of having the symptoms. I disagree with some of what he says, but I still think the points made in this books are very much worth considering.