Reviews
Will appeal to a broad range of readers, from academics interested in the history of medicine and popular culture, to general readers seeking social history rooted in an imaginative variety of sources.
Nightmare Factories has substance, style, and polish. Troy Rondinone's arguments are clear and convincing. He shows that the cultural history of the asylum is about more than the asylum itself—it's about many of the most troublesome social problems: inequalities of gender, race, and class; the proper scope of individual responsibility; what it means to be normal.
A capacious and engaging study of the mental institution and its multifaceted representations in US culture. Its range is formidable, traversing centuries and tackling analyses of canonical and genre fiction.
Troy Rondinone persuasively argues with abundant examples that cultural tropes about institutional abuses of the mentally ill have obscured the new 'snake pits' of the streets and prisons. A compelling statement for a new narrative of mental illness that includes humane, universal health care.
A lively and engaging examination of the place of the asylum in popular culture from the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Nightmare Factories is an accessible and entertaining look at a world we have now mostly lost.
Troy Rondinone documents how novels, movies, and mass entertainment influence society's perceptions of asylums, helping to shape public policy, mold psychiatry, and impact mental health treatment—often for good, but for the worse too. Thoughtful, thorough, and cleverly written, Nightmare Factories is a unique contribution: a study that reveals the power of pop culture in portraying Americans with mental illnesses and how we treat them. Brilliantly done.
This book is a captivating journey through how mental illness has been perceived and treated over the last 200+ years. As Dr. Dean Brooks would say, Troy's work has 'exploded into consciousness the things we have refused to look at.' Dean would be commending Troy for fighting the good fight.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. The Enchanter's Castle
Chapter 2: Woman in White, Angel in Black
Chapter 3: Monsters of the Asylum
Chapter 4: Freudian Rescues
Acknowledgments
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. The Enchanter's Castle
Chapter 2: Woman in White, Angel in Black
Chapter 3: Monsters of the Asylum
Chapter 4: Freudian Rescues
Chapter 5: The Dawning Age of Paranoia
Chapter 6: They're Coming to Take You Away
Chapter 7: The Asylum Next Door
Chapter 8: Asylums Don't Work
Chapter 9: Breakout
Chapter 10: Standardization
Chapter 11: Return of the Gothic
Epilogue: Real Horrors
Notes
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