Psychiatry in Communist Europe

by Sarah Marks (Editor), Mat Savelli (Editor)

This is the first book to address the history of psychiatry under Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, from the Soviet Union to East Germany. It brings together new research addressing understandings of mental health and disorder, treatments and therapies, and the interplay between politics, ideology and psychiatry.

Genres: History

233 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2015

Reviews

[Alicia]

Muy interesante lectura sobre psiquiatría en el comunismo más allá del abuso psiquiátrico. Por supuesto, mucho más interesante en algunos artículos que en otros (geniales la introducción, el capítulo sobre terapia y trabajo y el último capítulo) pero contenta de ver algo novedoso que no homogeneiza todas las prácticas del bloque comunista y que tiene en cuenta dinámicas coloniales/centro-perifericas

[Zhelana]

As is true with most books written by multiple authors, this had good and bad articles in it. There were enough good ones to keep me reading, but enough bad ones that it took me since February to read this book, and i's a very short book. The last article, an analysis of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the most interesting by far, which meant it ended on a positive note and probably got a higher star rating than it might have. Still, there was some interesting discussion of Soviet psychiatry without much mention of punitive psychiatry. In providing this it did provide what I was looking for when I picked it up, and i think it is a much needed series of voices giving the people who were actually mentally ill some attention instead of only the people who were treated as a punishment for dissident views.