Author: Anne Harrington File Type: epub Mind Fixers tells the history of psychiatrys quest to understand the biological basis of mental illness and asks where we need to go from here. In Mind Fixers, Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, explores psychiatrys repeatedly frustrated struggle to understand mental disorder in biomedical terms. She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds. But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new biological revolution was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time. Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatrys waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well. In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones. A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

Author: Wolfram von Eschenbach File Type: pdf Vast in its scope, incomparably dense in its imagery, Wolfram von Eschenbachs Parzival ranks alongside Dantes Divine Comedy as one of the foremost narrative works to emerge from medieval Europe. This book is a new translation of Parzival, together with the fragments of the Titurel, an elegiac offshoot of Parzival, and the nine love-songs attributed to Wolfram. Parzival is the greatest of the medieval Grail romances. In its depth and complexity of characterisation this work of the early thirteenth century anticipates the modern novel. It encompasses deeds of chivalry, tournaments and sieges, courtly love, and other erotic undertakings, but also sin and penance, and a deeply moving study in depression. Centre stage are the Grail Castle and Arthurs Round Table, but the pagan world of the Orient also is also reflected. Parzival has inspired and influenced works as diverse as Wagners Parsifal and Lohengrin, Franz Kafkas The Castle, Terry Gilliams film The Fisher King, and Umberto Ecos Baudolino. Cyril Edwards thoughtful translation vividly conveys the power of this complex, wide-ranging medieval masterpiece. CYRIL EDWARDS is a lecturer in German at St Peters College and Research Fellow of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. He is the author of The Beginnings of German Literature (Camden House, 2002), and numerous articles on the medieval lyric and Old High German. His previous translations include Hans Sachss Song of the Nose for the Kings Singers, Bernhard Maiers Dictionary of Celtic Religion and Culture (Boydell & Brewer, 1997) and The Medieval Housebook (Prestel-Verlag, 1997). **