Professor Gail A. Hornstein, Visiting Professorial Fellow (January to June 2003)
Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College, Gail A. Hornstein has studied for more than 20 years narratives of mental illness written by patients. Typically dismissed by psychiatrists and practically invisible to historians of that field, patient narratives offer extraordinary insights into mental illness and its treatment. More than 300 patients memoirs and autobiographies have been published in English alone ; countless others lie half-written in desk drawers, or buried, unacknowledged, in physicians' publications and case notes. These materials provide a radically different vantage point from which to analyse psychiatry's development.
The inter-disciplinary nature of Professor Hornstein's project was shown through its focus on the differing forms of narrative strategy used by doctors and patients, and the ways German culture of the 1920s and 1930s was perceived by conservatives in Britain.
Papers given by Professor Hornstein
Professor Hornstein gave a lecture on 19 May 2003 "Hearing Voices: Dialogues with the 'Mad'"and also gave a seminar in the Dean's Seminar Series on 11 June 2003: 'Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and the Psychotherapy of Psychosis'
