A review by jmccyoung
Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness by Roy Richard Grinker

informative medium-paced

4.5

Fascinating history of mental illness and its perception in society - primarily in the West, but with a good bit of comparative perspectives from other cultures - and of treatments. Although the author is an anthropologist, his father and grandfather were psychiatrists (as is his wife) and the account is enlivened by stories from family history, including his grandfather's psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. A substantial part of the book is devoted to mental illness in the military: its classification and treatment during and between wars.