Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness

Thank you for downloading this Free Press eBook. Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Free Press and Simon & Schuster. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com CONTENTS Acknowledgments Authorship Note A Note on the Patients A Note on “Psych” Words Epigraph Preface: The Truman Show Delusion PART I THE SLEEP OF REASON 1. A Short History of Madness James Tilly Matthews: The Air Loom Donald: Depression and Damnation Louis: Hell on Earth 2. One Hundred Years of Delusion Friedrich Krauss: A Hot Metal Disk Ruby: All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go How Does It Feel? Truman Revisited: David: Unreality Show Lori: Charley’s Mom Ethan: The Otherness of Other People PART II THE SOCIAL LIFE OF MADNESS 3. The Madding Crowd Samir: Poking Around the Brain Jada: Very Pregnant Jane: The Queen 4. Hell Is Other People John: The Academic Do Delusions Foster Violence? Calvin: Othello in New York 5. Belief Unhinged Simone: The Pope When Life Imitates Art Lawrence: Artificial Intelligence 6. Beyond Belief Benjamin: Misperceptions Benjamin: Building Trust Kevin: The Olympian About the Authors Notes Bibliography Figure Sources Index For our parents And for Jos ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A great many people helped us with this book. More than anyone, we owe a debt of gratitude to Derek Webster, who helped us to find the contours of our ideas and showed us how to express them more clearly and effectively. This book is incomparably better than it would have been if we hadn’t had the benefit of his insight, experience, and support. Many friends and colleagues offered valuable suggestions and advice on our work. We’re particularly grateful to James Kirkbride and Ned Shorter, who gave us a great deal of feedback on parts of the manuscript. We’re also very grateful for the help given to us by Ralph Adolphs, Alia AlSaji, Tim Bayne, Carol Bernstein, Marie-Eve Carrier, Suparna Choudhury, Max Coltheart, Mylissa Falkner, Lisa Fielding, Cordelia Fine, Glen O. Gabbard, Sandro Galea, Michael Garrett, Brad Goodman, Edward Hagen, Mike Jay, Lawrence Joseph, Joshua Karpati, Jay S. Kwawer, Robyn Langdon, Jesse Laz, Eric Lewis, Dolores Malaspina, Eric Marcus, Janet McTeer, Nancy McWilliams, Alessandra Miklavçic, Kengo Miyazono, Donatella Moltisanti, Joel Paris, Dan Posner, Benjamin J. Sadock, Jack Sava, Gilda Sherwin, Rob Stephens, and Gabrielle Weiner. We’ve been helped enormously by our research assistants Tessa Blanchfield, Alison Bruni, Emma Cusumano, Devon Kapoor, Leah Katzman, Marie Prévost, Elizabeth Scott, Brooke Struck, Judy Yeh, and Anna Zuckerman. We owe a special debt to Karina Vold. We’re also very grateful to Yvan Tétreault for his work on producing the excellent figures. We could not have finished—or even started—this book without the help and support given to us by our agent, Max Brockman, and our editors Nick Greene, Karyn Marcus, Leah Miller, Sydney Tanigawa, and Webb Younce. Thanks are also due to all of the people at Free Press and Simon & Schuster, especially Patty Romanowski, who helped bring this book to life. To any friends, family, or colleagues we may have overlooked, we are deeply sorry and can easily be made to feel guilty. Feel free to take full advantage of this trait (once per person, please). I thank my teachers, colleagues, and friends at the Department of Psychiatry of the NYU School of Medicine and at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education. Many thanks to the staff of Bellevue Hospital Center, particularly to my partners Michael Sobel and Serena Volpp. Special thanks to the residents, who do the bulk of the w