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9780226830896

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"""For too long, we have accepted a contrast between madness and reason and all the more so between madness and economics. But Bassiri brilliantly demonstrates how our conceptions of madness and moral value are shot through with economic ideas, that in modern societies madness has had a fully economic rationality, that this economic rationality matters for social thought as much as for psychiatric treatments. In a historical epistemology that forces us to reread classics of modern psychology as much as relearn its story through half-forgotten intellectuals, he offers something truly original: a theory of suffering amid capitalist enterprise, and of the ways in which we can imagine a form of care unbound by a century and a half of transactional thinking.""--Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University ""In this smart and sophisticated book, Bassiri shows us how an economic style of reasoning came to permeate psychiatry at the turn of the century. Not only were economic and psychiatric metaphors constantly entangled with one another but madness itself became central to economic rationalization. This book offers us a radically new perspective on the history of psychiatry. It also puts forth a fascinating philosophy of psychiatry which places irrationalism at the heart of modern capitalism.""--Camille Robcis, Columbia University"

“In this smart and sophisticated book, Bassiri shows us how an economic style of reasoning came to permeate psychiatry at the turn of the century. Not only were economic and psychiatric metaphors constantly entangled with one another but madness itself became central to economic rationalization. This book offers us a radically new perspective on the history of psychiatry. It also puts forth a fascinating philosophy of psychiatry which places irrationalism at the heart of modern capitalism.” -- Camille Robcis, Columbia University “For too long, we have accepted a contrast between madness and reason and all the more so between madness and economics. But Bassiri brilliantly demonstrates how our conceptions of madness and moral value are shot through with economic ideas, that in modern societies madness has had a fully economic rationality, that this economic rationality matters for social thought as much as for psychiatric treatments. In a historical epistemology that forces us to reread classics of modern psychology as much as relearn its story through half-forgotten intellectuals, he offers something truly original: a theory of suffering amid capitalist enterprise, and of the ways in which we can imagine a form of care unbound by a century and a half of transactional thinking.” -- Stefanos Geroulanos, New York University

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Nima Bassiri is assistant professor of literature at Duke University, where he is also the codirector of the Institute for Critical Theory.

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