Dreams and Delusions

This book is a wide-ranging collection of articles and essays on mainly psychiatric topics, but there are also some contributions on the closely related fields of psychology and medicine.Although the psychiatric topics are diverse, ranging from intriguing historical case studies to contemporary problems of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, there are some shared themes which include the unity of mind and body, the notion of psychiatric diagnosis as a social construction, the importance of the autonomy of patients and the malign influence of negative stereotypes of mental illness.The close connection between psychiatry and psychology is illustrated, for instance, by the brief discussion of the effect of the colour green on our mood, while "The Decline Effect" casts significant doubt on the validity of many of the findings of medical research.