Madness in Cold War America

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-138-95124-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 184 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 363 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Cultural History

This book tells the story of how madness came to play a prominent part in America’s political and cultural debates. It argues that metaphors of madness rise to unprecedented popularity amidst the domestic struggles of the early Cold War and become a pre-eminent way of understanding the relationship between politics and culture in the United States. In linking the individual psyche to society, psychopathology contributes to issues central to post-World War II society: a dramatic extension of state power, the fate of the individual in bureaucratic society, the political function of emotions, and the limits to admissible dissent. Such vocabulary may accuse opponents of being crazy. Yet at stake is a fundamental error of judgment, for which madness provides welcome metaphors across US diplomacy and psychiatry, social movements and criticism, literature and film. In the process, major parties and whole historical eras, literary movements and social groups are declared insane. Reacting against violence at home and war abroad, countercultural authors oppose a sane madness to irrational reason—romanticizing the wisdom of the schizophrenic and paranoia’s superior insight. As the Sixties give way to a plurality of lifestyles an alternative vision arrives: of a madness now become so widespread and ordinary that it may, finally, escape pathology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dunst, Alexander

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Sozialpsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Cold War Madness

2. The Pathologies of Dissent: Constructing the Cold War Psyche

3. Practical Cures: From Radical Psychiatry to Self Help

4. A Sane Madness?: Psychosis and Cold War Countercultures

5. Paranoid Narrative: Writing the Secret History of the Cold War

6. A Schizophrenic Postmodernity: Literary Studies and the Politics of Critique

Über Autor(innen)

Alexander Dunst is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn.