Madness (overviews & introductions)

Print:

• Madness: A Brief History, by Roy Porter
• The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, by Thomas Szasz
• Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Mass Hysteria: Penis Panic, Dancing Plague, and Other Worrisome Mind Contagions

Print:

• A Time to Dance, a Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the Dancing Plague of 1518 by John Waller
• The Martians have landed: A History of Media-driven Panics and Hoaxes by Robert Bartholomew
• Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias by Jeff Fleischer
• The Great Singapore Penis Panic and the Future of American Mass Hysteria by Scott Mendelson
• The Naked Lady who Stood on Her Head: a Psychiatrists’s Stories of his Most Bizarre Cases by Gary Small

Online:

• “Dancing Death” — BBC
• “Dancing Plague’ and Other Odd Afflictions Explained” — Discovery
• “Mass Delusions and Hysterias: Highlights from the Past Millennium” -Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), Robert E. Bartholomew and Erich Goode, Vol. 24.3, May/June 2000

Mercury & Turpentine: The Paintbrush-Licking Mad Genius of the Masters

• Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, by Kay Redfield Jamison

Online:

• “Did Absinthe Make Van Gogh’s Mind Wander?” – LA Times, Nov 1988
• “From Gemstones to Arsenic: How the Development of Pigment Colored Art” – Hyperallergic
• Toxicity of Pigments – Caroline Roberts
• “The Madness Painting” Ivan The Terrible and his Son Ivan by Ilya Efimovich Repin – Extribulum
• “New Insight into Madness and Great Art” – Toronto Star
• “Exploring Artistic Creativity And Its Link to Madness” – New York Times
• “Death in the Sick Room: Edvard Munch (1863–1944)” – Sheryl L. Geisler, MS, PA-C, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey
• “Secrets of the Creative Brain” – The Atlantic
• “Stardust and Mirrors: The Myth of the Mad Genius” – CSI
• “Mad Genius” – Science Daily

Toxoplasmosis: Two Bugs, One Gut

Print:

• Toxoplasma Gondii: The Model Apicomplexan. Perspectives and Methods, by Louis M. Weiss

Online:

• Center for Disease Control: Toxoplasmosis
• National Institutes of Health: Protozoa: Structure, Classification, Growth, and Development
• Stanford University ParaSites: Toxoplasmosis Gondii
• “How Your Cat is Making You Crazy” – The Atlantic
• “How Cat Litter Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii Influences The Brain” – Medical News Today
• “Toxoplasma Gondii Brain Parasite Infection From Cats Linked To Schizophrenia, Suicide” – Huffington Post

 “Bitches Be Crazy”: The Twisted Perceptions of Femininity & Madness

Print:

• The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction, by Rachel P. Maines
• Studies in Hysteria by Josef Breuer, Sigmund Freud
• Hysteria: The Disturbing History, by Andrew Scull

Online:

• “Hysteria and the Strange History of Vibrators” – Psychology Today
• Biography: Joseph Mortimer Granville, inventory of the vibrator – NNBD
• “Dr. Swift’s Cure for Hysteria – Explore Historic California

Other:

• “Passion and Power – The Technology of Orgasm” (documentary)

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood: The Fickle Boundary Between Different and Crazy

Print:

• The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry by Gary Greenberg
• A Social History of the Asylum by Thomas George Ebert
• Madness: An American History of Mental Illness and Its Treatment by Mary de Young
• Homosexuality: Disease or a Way of Life, by Edmund Bergler
• An Introduction to the Sociology of Health and Illness, by Kevin White

Online:

• “Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race,” by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright – PBS
• Chauncey, George, Jr., “From Sexual Inversion to Homosexuality” – Jstor

Gaol and Bedlam: The Law of Criminal Insanity in the U.S. and U.K.  

Print:

• The Insanity Plea, by William Winslade and Judith Ross
• Questioning Authority: Justice and Criminal Law, by David Bazelon
• Mental Disorder and Criminal Justice: Policy Provision and Practice, by Brian Littlechild

Articles:

• Coutts, House of Lords: Standard of Self-Control of the Reasonable Man, JoCL 65 (128)(2), 1 April 2001
• Bard, Re-Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Why the Incarceration of Individuals with Serious Mental Illness Violates Public Health, Ethical, and Constitutional Principles and Therefore Cannot be Made Right by Piecemeal Changes to the Insanity Defense, 5 Hous. J. Health L. & Pol’y 1 (2005)
• Steadman, Insanity Defense Reform in the United States – Post Hinckley, 11 Mental Health & Physical Disabilities L. Rep. 54, 54 (1987)
• Platt and Diamond, The Origins and Development of the ‘Wild Beast’ Concept of Mental Illness and Its Relation to Theories of Criminal Responsibility, 1 J.Hist. Behav. Sci. 355 (1965)

Online:

• American Bar Association Standards for Criminal Justice and Mental Health
• Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991 in its entirety
• “What is Automatism?” – BBC

Lobotomy: The Under-appreciated Cure for “Resting Bitch Face”

Books

• The Development of Modern Medicine, by RH Shryock
• The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness, by Jack El-Hai
• Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness, by Elliot Valenstein

Online:

• (Video) “How Electroshock Therapy Changed Me” – Dr. Sherwin Nuland
• “The Cock Ring Story” – Small Peculiar
• “A Disturbing Care Pamphlet Given to Families of Lobotomized Soldiers” – io9
• “Terrifying, Century-Old Photographs from Neuroscience Experiments” – io9
• “The Strange, Sad History of the Lobotomy – io9
• “Discovering the Roots of Memory” – The Atlantic
• (Video) “Lobotomy” PBS Documentary on Walter Freeman – YouTube
• (Video) PBS: “Lobotomies – Walter Freeman Era” – YouTube
• “Brain Images Complex Beauty” – Huffington Post
• “1800s Surgical Kit Unboxed” – BoingBoing
• “The Doctor’s White Coat: An Historical Perspective” – AMA
• “Why Do Doctors Wear White Coats” – Slate
• “For Depression, Prescribing Exercise Before Medication” – The Atlantic

For each salon, we  invite our speakers to share the resources and interesting reading they came across in researching their talk, so that we can all dig more deeply. This reading list was compiled by Odd Salon with Lizzie Lee Savage, Stuart Gripman, Marci Bennett, Fritz Striker, Jade Hoffman, Arthur Kay and Kaila Angelo.  Thank you!