Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: The Birth of Postpsychiatry

Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry offers an analysis and critique of contemporary psychiatric practice from a variety of critical perspectives, ranging from Michel Foucault to Donna Haraway. This contribution to the burgeoning field of medical humanities contends that psychiatry’s move away from a theory-based model (one favoring psychoanalysis and other talk therapies) to a more scientific model (based on new breakthroughs in neuroscience and pharmacology) has been detrimental to both the profession and its clients. This shift towards a science-based model includes the codification of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders to the status of standard scientific reference, enabling mental-health practitioners to assign tidy classifications for any mental disturbance or deviation. Psychiatrist and cultural studies scholar Bradley Lewis argues for
postpsychiatry,
a new psychiatric practice informed by the insights of poststructuralist theory.