Welcome to Arkham Asylum: Essays on Psychiatry and the Gotham City Institution

by Sharon Packer (Editor), Daniel R. Fredrick (Editor), Jason W. Ellis (Foreword)

Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane is a staple of the Batman universe, evolving into a franchise comprised of comic books, graphic novels, video games, films, television series and more. The Arkham franchise, supposedly light-weight entertainment, has tackled weighty issues in contemporary psychiatry. Its plotlines reference clinical and ethical controversies that perplex even the most up-to-date professionals. The 25 essays in this collection explore the significance of Arkham's sinister psychiatrists, murderous mental patients, and unethical geneticists. It invites debates about the criminalization of the mentally ill, mental patients who move from defunct state hospitals into expanding prisons, madness versus badness, sociopathy versus psychosis, the "insanity defense" and more. Invoking literary figures from Lovecraft to Poe to Caligari, the 25 essays in this collection are a broad-ranging and thorough assessment of the franchise and its relationship to contemporary psychiatry.

311 pages, Paperback

Published December 19, 2019

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful (and def creative) academic essays on the cultural phenomenon that is Batman and how mental illness is portrayed in the iconic Gotham City crazy crypt that is Arkham Asylum. My personal faves are the essays on religious themes that arise in Arkham and the essay discussing H.P. Lovecraft’s influence on the creation and vibe of Arkham Asylum.

[David Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only negative here was how much overlap there was in so many of the essays. Reading the same thing over and over to start half the essays became a chore.