About the Book
As a medium that aims to connect people through the communication and interpretation of experiences, cinema is uniquely positioned to showcase cultural misunderstandings around issues of mental health. Frames of Minds traces a history of psychiatry in film, concentrating on the major paradigm shifts in neuropsychiatry over the last century. Oftentimes, representations of psychiatry, mental illness, and psychotic breakdown are reduced to tropes and used by
filmmakers as a tool for plot progression. Conversely, films can be used as an avenue to voice common concerns about the missteps of psychiatry, including overdiagnosis and mistreatment. Dr. Eelco Wijdicks
provides fresh insights into the minds of filmmakers and how they creatively tackle this complex topic. How do filmmakers use psychiatry, and what do they want us to see? What is their frame of mind--psychoanalytically, biologically, sociologically, anthropologically? Were they influenced by their own prejudices about the origins of mental illness? How does this influence the direction of their films?Examining the history of film alongside developments in neuropsychiatry,
Frames of Minds uncovers a cinematic language of psychiatry. By taking chances to portray mental illness, filmmakers aim to achieve a sense of reality, and provide catharsis for viewers through the act
of dramatization. Ultimately, the history of psychiatry in film is a history of the public perception of medicine, and the ways psychiatry is understood by directors, writers, actors, and audiences.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Chapter 1: The Mind and Brain
Chapter 2: The Mind Readers
Chapter 3: The Imagining Brain
Chapter 4: The Dreaming Brain
Chapter 5: The Drugged Brain
Chapter 6: The Traumatized Mind and Brain
Chapter 7: The Shocked and Lesioned Brain
Chapter 8: The Violent Mind and Brain
Epilogue: The Directors Mindset
Acknowledgments
Filmography
About the Author :
Eelco F.M. Wijdicks, MD, PhD is Professor of Neurology at the College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic. In 1992, he established the Mayo Clinic Neurocritical Care Program. He was the founding editor of Neurocritical Care, the official journal of the Neurocritical Care Society and has been named Honorary Member of the Neurocritical Care Society. He originated the FOUR SCORE coma scale and has over 1000 research papers, practice guidelines,
topic reviews, book chapters, and editorials to his credit, as well as having single-authored, co-authored, and edited 35 books on neurocritical care. Dr. Wijdicks is also an attending neurointensivist in the Neurosciences Intensive
Care Unit at Saint Marys Hospital, Rochester, MN, and is a Professor of the History of Medicine. He is the recipient of the Dutch Winkler medal, the Karis Award, and the Distinguished Educator Award.
Dr. Wijdicks has studied medical representation in cinema and written scholarly film reviews for medical journals and has published on the interface between psychiatry and neurology. This book is part of a series on medicine in film and includes Cinema, MD, Neurocinema, and Neurocinema: The Sequel.
Review :
The pleasures of film-viewing are the gateway to new understandings of the human mind. With this visionary and essential compendium, Eelco Wijdicks has done the deep work of illuminating connections that will alter the way we think.
Dr. Eelco Wijdicks again turns his authoritative gaze on the cinema of illness and medicine with a sweeping history that investigates how, from the earliest nickelodeons, the medium has treated the facts and known understanding of complicated conditions and disorders. Hollywood loves pain and neurosis, and Wijdicks examines a wide range of co-morbidity factors that suffuse the best and worst (famous and overlooked) movies. These range from substance abuse, depression, and schizophrenia to an examination of how the penchant for violence on the screen, especially from certain stars and filmmakers, might affect your mental health.
Psychiatry and film have long had an uneasy relationship. However, the celluloid's view has been often subverted by sensationalism, scaremongering, and the reification of stigma. Frames of Mind is as much a scholarly exploration of the history of mental health and film, as an invitation to imagine intersections. Dr. Eelco Wijdicks offers an entreaty toward an overdue agenda for cinema and psychiatry: one that replaces voyeurism and exploitation of some of society's most vulnerable with a shared commitment to better understand, empathize, and elicit meaningful action on their behalf. This volume will help us better appreciate, through film, not just the burdens of mental illness, but the promise of treatment, recovery, and reintegration.
In Frames of Mind, Eelco Wijdicks narrows his historical aperture to neuropsychiatric representations. This work not only better focuses our appreciation of how mental illness by actors, writers, and directors have shaped audiences' perspectives on these diseases, but also documents how filmmakers have appropriated depictions of mental illness as metaphors to dramatize their era's cultural chief concerns., Frames of Mind is a director's cut of brave scholarship exploring where the movie magic ends and medical misrepresentation begins for pressing issues and politically charged subjects like substance use, sanity, violence, and more.
Frames of Minds is a fascinating read. It will be useful and of interest to film scholars, historians, healthcare workers, and anyone interested in the depiction of the human condition in cinema.
