For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone
deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal,
anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks
in the struggle against mental-illness stigma--from the eighteenth
century, through America's major wars, and into today's high-tech
economy.
Nobody's Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be
explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we
defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and
that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of
shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at
the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the
twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted
and visible part of human diversity.
Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family's four
generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather's
analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter's experience with autism,
and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on
cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research
in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to
discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to
neurodiversity.
Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody's Normal explains
how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the
shadow of stigma.
