Abraham Nussbaum

Physician, Teacher, Writer


Nobody’s Normal, Roy Richard Grinker

As @roygrinker reminds, psychoanalytic and biological accounts of mental illness can both increase stigma. Both serve particular cultural interests, while dis-serving others. Grinker selects capitalism, war, and the body as his chief interests, then writes about them in an incredibly readable way. (For my money, no one has written a more readable account of dimensions in psychiatric diagnosis or the relationship between World War II and psychiatric diagnosis.) Anyone interested in truly understanding mental health stigma should read Grinker’s probing (and personal) account of why we stigmatize and what it does.