Höstens litteraturskörd

Det har kommit ut ett antal intressanta tidsskriftsnummer och böcker på sistone så jag har tänkt göra en post enbart inriktad på det.

Först och främst har vi ett nytt nummer av History of the Human Sciences (http://hhs.sagepub.com/) innehållandes ett antal intressanta artiklar. Bland annat har vi Katherine Angels "Contested psychiatric ontology and feminist critique ‘Female Sexual Dysfunction’ and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual":

In this article I discuss the emergence of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) within American psychiatry and beyond in the postwar period, setting out what I believe to be important and suggestive questions neglected in existing scholarship. Tracing the nomenclature within successive editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), I consider the reification of the term ‘FSD’, and the activism and scholarship that the rise of the category has occasioned. I suggest that analysis of FSD benefits from scrutiny of a wider range of sources (especially since the popular and scientific cross-pollinate). I explore the multiplicity of FSD that emerges when one examines this wider range, but I also underscore a reinscribing of anxieties about psychogenic aetiologies. I then argue that what makes the FSD case additionally interesting, over and above other conditions with a contested status, is the historically complex relationship between psychiatry and feminism that is at work in contemporary debates. I suggest that existing literature on FSD has not yet posed some of the most important and salient questions at stake in writing about women’s sexual problems in this period, and can only do this when the relationship between ‘second-wave’ feminism, ‘post-feminism’, psychiatry and psychoanalysis becomes part of the terrain to be analysed, rather than the medium through which analysis is conducted.

Även i senaste nummret av Journal of the History of the Neurosciences (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/njhn20/current) finns det spännande inslag, t.ex Shai Mulinaris

"Monoamine Theories of Depression: Historical Impact on Biomedical Research":

Monoamine theories associate depression with reduced brain monoamine levels. These theories achieved broad popularity in the mid-1960s. The present article reviews the historical development of monoamine theories and their subsequent impact on biomedical research. Alleged divisions between West European and US researchers over competing versions of the theories are investigated using bibliometrics. Subsequently, the application of monoamine theories in the NIMH Collaborative Program on the Psychobiology of Depression is covered. The article argues that the impact of monoamine theories is best explained by the ability of researchers, governmental agencies, and pharmaceutical companies to invoke theories that advance various projects and agendas.

Sedan har vi två böcker som jag tror kan vara spännande bidrag till att kartlägga psykologins historia. David B. Baker har varit redaktör för antologin "The Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology", en maffig översikt på över 600 sidor som visar på hur psykologin måste förstås som situerad i tid och rum:

The science and practice of psychology has evolved around the world on different trajectories and timelines, yet with a convergence on the recognition of the need for a human science that can confront the challenges facing the world today. Few would argue that the standard narrative of the history of psychology has emphasized European and American traditions over others, but in today's global culture, there is a greater need in psychology for international understanding. This volume describes the historical development of psychology in countries throughout the world. Contributors provide narratives that examine the political and socioeconomic forces that have shaped their nations' psychologies. Each unique story adds another element to our understanding of the history of psychology. The chapters in this volume remind us that there are unique contexts and circumstances that influence the ways in which the science and practice of psychology are assimilated into our daily lives. Making these contexts and circumstances explicit through historical research and writing provides some promise of greater international insight, as well as a better understanding of the human condition.

Och som en mer specialiserad inlaga i denna forskningstradition har vi "Depression in Japan" av Junko Kitanaka:

Since the 1990s, suicide in recession-plagued Japan has soared, and rates of depression have both increased and received greater public attention. In a nation that has traditionally been uncomfortable addressing mental illness, what factors have allowed for the rising medicalization of depression and suicide? Investigating these profound changes from historical, clinical, and sociolegal perspectives, "Depression in Japan" explores how depression has become a national disease and entered the Japanese lexicon, how psychiatry has responded to the nation's ailing social order, and how, in a remarkable transformation, psychiatry has overcome the longstanding resistance to its intrusion in Japanese life. Questioning claims made by Japanese psychiatrists that depression hardly existed in premodern Japan, Junko Kitanaka shows that Japanese medicine did indeed have a language for talking about depression which was conceived of as an illness where psychological suffering was intimately connected to physiological and social distress.The author looks at how Japanese psychiatrists now use the discourse of depression to persuade patients that they are victims of biological and social forces beyond their control; analyzes how this language has been adopted in legal discourse surrounding "overwork suicide"; and considers how, in contrast to the West, this language curiously emphasizes the suffering of men rather than women. Examining patients' narratives, Kitanaka demonstrates how psychiatry constructs a gendering of depression, one that is closely tied to local politics and questions of legitimate social suffering. Drawing upon extensive research in psychiatric institutions in Tokyo and the surrounding region, "Depression in Japan" uncovers the emergence of psychiatry as a force for social transformation in Japan.

Med andra ord bjuder hösten på mycket läsvärt!