The Medical Mind in Literature and Culture (IL901)
According to the physician, anthropologist and Harvard Professor of Psychiatry Arthur Kleinman, illness – the human experience of symptoms and suffering – has different sorts of meaning, some of which are formed socially and culturally (Kleinman, The Illness Narratives, 1988).
The aim of the module is to explore and critique past and current models of the mind from a range of disciplinary perspectives including the sciences, history, literature, philosophy, and film. We will consider issues relating to mental illness, neurological disorder and trauma memory in the light of these models.
The ambition for this module is to encourage and enable students from across the University (including Warwick Medical School) to develop their skills at identifying and understanding some of the different sorts of meaning associated with the mind and mental disorder.
The module will be delivered over 10 two-hour seminar/workshops. Teaching will include a mixture of lectures and seminars, making use of a variety of media (e.g. videos, text and pictures) and activities (e.g. group discussions, guest lectures and student presentations). Texts and material will come from a variety of sources (including literature, life sciences/medicine, history, and philosophy).
Illustrative Syllabus
The module will consist of three parts:
(1) The mind, history and the external world;
(2) The mind and the self;
(3) Performance and psychiatry
Part 1 will begin with
(i) historical conceptions of the mind and mental disorder from different disciplinary perspectives;
(ii) explore contemporary and subsequent responses to shell shock in both medicine and literature, and
(iii) consider hallucinations and delusions from the perspectives of literature and medicine
Part 2 will
(ii) use selected texts/ excerpts, film representations to consider the concept and lived experience of schizophrenia
(iii) look at memory, amnesia and the self through memoir and film
Part 3, will explore theatre, neurology and psychopathology:
(i) it will begin by using Samuel Beckett’s 1972 play Not I and ideas about performance, language and the self in the exploration of language pathologies, neurodiversity, and existential psychiatry
(ii) it will then use Sarah Kane’s 1999 play 4.48 Psychosis to think through the aesthetic and ethical challenges of representing subjective experiences of psychosis and psychiatric treatment, and explore traditions of anti-psychiatry in (and outside) the theatre.
Some indicative primary texts:
Pat Barker, Regeneration [novel]
Samuel Beckett (1972), Not I [play; tv film]
Sarah Kane (1999) 4.48 Psychosis [play]
Lodge Kerrigan (1993) Clean, Shaven [film]
Joe Penhall (2000) Blue/ Orange [play]
Oliver Sacks (1985) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat [essays (popular science)]
Marguerite Sechehaye (1951) Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl [clinical memoir]
Some indicative secondary texts:
Rita Charon (2006) Narrative Medicine
Stephen Harper (2009) 'The Suffering Screen: Cinematic Portrayals of Mental Distress', Madness, Power and the Media: 59-102
Femi Oyebode (2009) Mindreadings
Louis Sass (1994) Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought
Andrew Scull (2015) Madness in Civilisation: A Cultural History of Insanity
Anne Whitehead (2017) Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction
Angela Woods (2011) The Sublime Object of Psychiatry: Schizophrenia in Clinical and Cultural Theory
Module convenor
E.C.Barry@warwick.ac.uk
When
Term 2 (Spring) 2023-24
Tuesday 10:00 to 12:00
MODULE NOT CONFIRMED FOR 2024-25
Where
FAB 3.33
Assessment
For 20 CATS:
75% - essay/ report/ review article (3000 words)
25% - student presentation (15 minutes)
For 30 CATS:
65% - essay/ report/ review article (4000 words)
10% - Annotated bibliography (approximately 2000 words)
25% - student presentation (15 minutes)
The module is also available to MBChB students from Warwick Medical School as an SSC1 (for Autumn 2021)