Historical and cultural perspectives of madness in the Cold War (1945-1989)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2021.167449

Keywords:

Cultural History, Cold War, United States, Politics and culture, Counterculture

Abstract

The present review on the book Madness in Cold War America by Alexander Dunst seeks to present the trajectory of madness between a pathology and the rhetoric of culture and the American state. From five densely constructed chapters, the author presents the importance of locating madness as a product of the Cold War. From literary and cinematographic sources the author makes an intense analysis on how psychoanalysis and psychiatry became popular in the daily lives of Americans. In addition, the rhetoric of the American government also used the theoretical vocabulary of psychoanalysis to frame individuals who were compatible with liberal ideology, thus, the polarization between normal and mad has extended both to a condemnation of the Soviet Union and to irrational / pathological as also to frame acceptable behaviors in American society.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Letícia Portella Milan, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

    Graduada em História pela Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. Mestre em História pela Universidade Federal de Pelotas. Doutoranda em História pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, bolsista Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES. 

References

BOURKE, Joanna. An intimate history of killing: Face-to-face killing in twentieth-century warfare. Basic Books, 1999.

CUSHMAN, Philip. Constructing the Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychoterapy. Boston: De Capo Press, 1996.

MAY, Elaine. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. Nova Iorque: Basic Books, 2017.

PEEL, Robin. Writing Back: Sylvia Plath and Cold War Politics. Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002.

WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel. O universalismo europeu: a retorica do poder. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2007.

Published

2021-05-04

Issue

Section

Book reviews

How to Cite

MILAN, Letícia Portella. Historical and cultural perspectives of madness in the Cold War (1945-1989). Revista de História, São Paulo, n. 180, p. 1–10, 2021. DOI: 10.11606/issn.2316-9141.rh.2021.167449. Disponível em: https://revistas.usp.br/revhistoria/article/view/167449.. Acesso em: 20 may. 2024.