Break On Through

In this brief but ambitious undertaking, Lucas Richert, chair in the history of pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, explores the impact of radical psychiatry in the United States during the 1970s. Richert's definition of the counterculture is amorphous, pointing to departures from common social standards. Of greater significance, he highlights approaches, which surfaced in both the 1960s and 1970s, to “diseased minds” (p. 2). Throughout, Richert offers expert dissections of radical examinations of then contemporary psychiatry. His book relates significant scientific breakthroughs that altered mental health treatment. Those included pharmacological, legislative, and diagnostic approaches undertaken amid a backlash against earlier psychiatric methodology. By design, Richert weaves in Foucauldian discourse analysis while presenting a new interpretation of American medical and mental health practices. As psychoanalysis became less acceptable, other approaches, drawn from the human potential movement, Scientology, and other venues such as parapsychology, proved more appealing, particularly to radical practitioners

Alternative medicine · Counterculture · Enthusiasm · Interpretation (philosophy · Mental health · Parapsychology · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sexology · Sociology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology