PDF⋙ Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl PDF, ePub eBook D0wnl0ad

Pills replaced the couch; neuroscience took the place of talk therapy; and as psychoanalysis faded from the scene, so did the castrating mothers and hysteric spinsters of Freudian theory. Or so the story goes. In Prozac on the Couch, psychiatrist Jonathan Michel Metzl boldly challenges recent psychiatric history, showing that there’s a lot of Dr. Freud encapsulated in late-twentieth-century psychotropic medications. Providing a cultural history of treatments for depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses through a look at the professional and popular reception of three “wonder drugs”—Miltown, Valium, and Prozac—Metzl explains the surprising ways Freudian gender categories and popular gender roles have shaped understandings of these drugs.

Prozac on the Couch traces the notion of “pills for everyday worries” from the 1950s to the early twenty-first century, through psychiatric and medical journals, popular magazine articles, pharmaceutical advertisements, and popular autobiographical "Prozac narratives.” Metzl shows how clinical and popular talk about these medications often reproduces all the cultural and social baggage associated with psychoanalytic paradigms—whether in a 1956 Cosmopolitan article about research into tranquilizers to “cure” frigid women; a 1970s American Journal of Psychiatry ad introducing Jan, a lesbian who “needs” Valium to find a man; or Peter Kramer’s description of how his patient “Mrs. Prozac” meets her husband after beginning treatment.

Prozac on the Couch locates the origins of psychiatry’s “biological revolution” not in the Valiumania of the 1970s but in American popular culture of the 1950s. It was in the 1950s, Metzl points out, that traditional psychoanalysis had the most sway over the American imagination. As the number of Miltown prescriptions soared (reaching 35 million, or nearly one per second, in 1957), advertisements featuring uncertain brides and unfaithful wives miraculously cured by the “new” psychiatric medicines filled popular magazines. Metzl writes without nostalgia for the bygone days of Freudian psychoanalysis and without contempt for psychotropic drugs, which he himself regularly prescribes to his patients. What he urges is an increased self-awareness within the psychiatric community of the ways that Freudian ideas about gender are entangled in Prozac and each new generation of wonder drugs. He encourages, too, an understanding of how ideas about psychotropic medications have suffused popular culture and profoundly altered the relationship between doctors and patients.

From reader reviews:

Janice Nolan:

Nowadays reading books be a little more than want or need but also be a life style. This reading routine give you lot of advantages. The advantages you got of course the knowledge the particular information inside the book in which improve your knowledge and information. The data you get based on what kind of guide you read, if you want send more knowledge just go with knowledge books but if you want experience happy read one together with theme for entertaining for example comic or novel. The particular Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs is kind of reserve which is giving the reader erratic experience.

Rodney Hussey:

The book untitled Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs contain a lot of information on that. The writer explains the girl idea with easy approach. The language is very simple to implement all the people, so do not worry, you can easy to read the item. The book was compiled by famous author. The author will take you in the new era of literary works. You can read this book because you can read on your smart phone, or gadget, so you can read the book with anywhere and anytime. In a situation you wish to purchase the e-book, you can available their official web-site in addition to order it. Have a nice learn.

Maria Blanco:

You could spend your free time you just read this book this publication. This Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs is simple to bring you can read it in the recreation area, in the beach, train in addition to soon. If you did not possess much space to bring the printed book, you can buy typically the e-book. It is make you easier to read it. You can save often the book in your smart phone. Therefore there are a lot of benefits that you will get when you buy this book.

Read Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl for online ebook

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl Free PDF d0wnl0ad, audio books, books to read, good books to read, cheap books, good books, online books, books online, book reviews epub, read books online, books to read online, online library, greatbooks to read, PDF best books to read, top books to read Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl books to read online.

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl Doc

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl Mobipocket

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs by Jonathan Michel Metzl EPub