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.
About the
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