In this book Allan Horwitz views mental illness within a sociological framework of deviance and social control and evaluates communal and individualistic styles of therapeutic control. His new prologue updates the work in the context of significant changes in the American response to mental illness, including the process of psychiatric diagnosis, conceptions of mental illness, and the dynamics of the mental health professions. Originally published by Academic Press in 1982.

From the Prologue to the Percheron Press Edition . . .

'[A new] system [of social control] based on less coercive and more voluntary therapy has crystallized as trends toward individualism have intensified. The social structures that characterize the remainder of this century, and the accompanying social responses to mental illness that arise, remain to be seen.'