Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry
Edited by Femi Oyebode
What can psychiatry learn from literature?
Literature can clarify, examine and
define emotions, behaviour and thoughts. For psychiatrists,
literary texts can be valuable tools for furthering our
understanding of patients and their conditions. This book explores
the fruitful relationships between the written word and central
aspects of psychiatric practice. It includes newly commissioned
chapters plus articles originally published in the journal
Advances in Psychiatric Treatment that have been reworked
and updated.
The contributors examine:
- Why doctors should read fiction and the
place of literature in medical education.
- The varied genres of autobiography,
fiction, poetry and letters.
- A range of topics, including addictions,
ageing and dementia, intellectual disability and autism.
The authors explore the description and
representation of mental states, the lived experience of distress,
the character of psychiatry as a system and the institutional
practices of psychiatry.
Although written by psychiatrists primarily
for psychiatrists, this collection offers a fascinating and
accessible insight into mental illness through the pages of novels,
poetry and autobiographies to be found in any bookshop.
Audience:
Should be of interest to all psychiatrists
(including trainees) - especially those with an interest in the
humanities.
Editor:
Femi Oyebode is Professor and Head of
Department of Psychiatry, University of Birmingham. He has
published widely on the relationship between literature and
psychiatry. His research interests include descriptive
psychopathology and delusional misidentification syndromes. He is
also a poet and literary critic.
Contents
1. The benefits of reading literature -
Allan Beveridge
2. Roles for literature in medical education -
Martyn Evans
3. Autobiographical narrative and psychiatry -
Femi Oyebode
4. Fictional narrative and psychiatry -
Femi Oyebode
5. Poetry and psychiatry - Femi
Oyebode
6. Letters and psychiatry: the case of Franz
Kafka - Femi Oyebode
7. Death and dying in literature - John
Skelton
8. Literary and biographical perspectives on
substance use - Ed Day and Iain Smith
9. Dementia and literature - Christopher
A. Vassilas
10. Portrayal of intellectual disability in
fiction - Anupama Iyer
11. Autism in fiction and autobiography -
Gordon Bates