Psychiatric Hegemony

Bruce Cohen is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His books include Mental Health User Narratives: New Perspectives on Illness and Recovery, Being Cultural and Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Thinking Critically about Mental Illness.- Chapter 2 Marxist Theory and Mental Illness: A Critique of Political Economy.- Chapter 3 Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental illness in Neoliberal Society.- Chapter 4 Work: Enforcing Compliance.- Chapter 5 Youth: Medicalising Deviance.- Chapter 6 Women: Reproducing Patriarchal Relations.- Chapter 7 Resistance: Pathologising Dissent.- Chapter 8 Conclusion: Challenging the Psychiatric Hegemon.- Chapter Appendix 1: Methodology for Textual Analysis of the DSMs.- Chapter Appendix 2: Youth-Related Diagnostic Categories in the DSM, 1952–2013.- Chapter Appendix 3: ‘Feminised’ Diagnostic Categories in the DSM, 1952–2013.

“Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness examines the genealogy of the current hegemonic status of psychiatry in neoliberal societies. His reconstruction of stories and their historical, political, institutional, and economical embeddedness bridges the gap between conceptualizations of mental illness in the traditions of symbolic interactionism, social constructivism, and more classically Marxist-influenced antipsychiatry. … Cohen’s work reminds us that critical challenges to psychiatric hegemony were once, and should again be, a progressive cause.” (Martin Harbusch and Michael Dellwing, Symbolic Interaction, August 26, 2019)“Psychiatric Hegemony explains how and why psychiatric discourse escaped from the clinic and spread throughout the masses to achieve hegemonic status in neo-liberal society. … Psychiatric Hegemony will inspire a wide range of scholarship that informs both the social and biological sciences, and that will one day perhaps even make a difference to the health and well-being of diverse populations worldwide.” (Paul H. Mason, Social History of Medicine, Vol. 31 (1), February, 2018)“In Psychiatric Hegemony, Bruce Cohen offers a critical analysis of the mental health system … . Cohen joins with other voices in calling for a system that provides necessary, humane help to those in need, and that exists to serve those in need … . These objectives seem worthwhile, and perhaps this volume will engage others in thinking outside the sociocultural box as well.” (Andrew Nocita, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 62 (25), June, 2017)