Break On Through

Break On Through by Lucas Richert

Lucas Richert, Director of the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy, breaks through the assumptions and breaks down the history of the radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s.

The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A Radical Caucus formed within the psychiatric profession and the antipsychiatry movement arose. Critics charged that the mental health establishment was complicit with the military-industrial complex, patients were released from mental institutions, and powerful antipsychotic drugs became available. Meanwhile, practitioners and patients experimented with new approaches to mental health, from primal screaming and the therapeutic use of psychedelics to a new reliance on quantification. In Break on Through, Lucas Richert investigates the decade's radical mental health practices and the lessons they offer for current debates. Richert discusses anti-Vietnam War activism and the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder given to some veterans; the radical psychiatrists who fought the system (and each other); the entry of New Age-style therapies, including Esalen's Human Potential Movement, into the laissez-faire therapeutic marketplace of the 1970s; the development of DSM I; and the use of LSD, cannabis, and MDMA.

Lucas Richert, Director of the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy, breaks through the assumptions and breaks down the history of the radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s.

The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A Radical Caucus formed within the psychiatric profession and the antipsychiatry movement arose. Critics charged that the mental health establishment was complicit with the military-industrial complex, patients were released from mental institutions, and powerful antipsychotic drugs became available. Meanwhile, practitioners and patients experimented with new approaches to mental health, from primal screaming and the therapeutic use of psychedelics to a new reliance on quantification. In Break on Through, Lucas Richert investigates the decade's radical mental health practices and the lessons they offer for current debates. Richert discusses anti-Vietnam War activism and the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder given to some veterans; the radical psychiatrists who fought the system (and each other); the entry of New Age-style therapies, including Esalen's Human Potential Movement, into the laissez-faire therapeutic marketplace of the 1970s; the development of DSM I; and the use of LSD, cannabis, and MDMA.

Richert, Lucas: - Lucas Richert is George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Strange Trips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drugs and coeditor-in-chief of Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262042826
ISBN 10	0262042827
Title	Break On Through
Author	Lucas Richert
Series	The Mit Press
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2019-10-08
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable