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All in Yer Head

All in Yer Head Co m p l i c a t i o n s LET IT BLEED All in Yer Head condition of our country’s Hello from HQ, where we are happy/sad to present number 26, Sickness and Pelf, on the culture of medicine and certain undiagnosed psychopathologies of everyday life in America. The operative method, wielded with a scalpel throughout this body of salvos, stories, poems, put-downs, and fake advice, keeps the illness distinct from the treatment. In the legal system, after all, the punishment does not fit the crime so much as it manufactures reasons to acquiesce to it; likewise, in medicine, “treatment options” that reach out of the wound are someone else’s ideas about the nature of the illness. To get into the diagnostic frame of mind, just call up a few gauzy scenes from your last visit to a U.S. hospital. Or consider that, next to prisons, barracks, and churches, hospitals are the institutions most prone to enforce our submission to absolute authority. All those masks, Latinate insignia, and robes—they front a veritable epidemic of errors, unnecessary surgeries, addictive medications, failing devices, and, oh yes, infections. Falling mentally ill is itself virtually a crime now, judging http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Baffler MIT Press

All in Yer Head

Summers, John
The Baffler – Jul 1, 2014
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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2014 John Summers
Subject
Complications
ISSN
1059-9789
eISSN
2164-926X
DOI
10.1162/BFLR_e_00272
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Co m p l i c a t i o n s LET IT BLEED All in Yer Head condition of our country’s Hello from HQ, where we are happy/sad to present number 26, Sickness and Pelf, on the culture of medicine and certain undiagnosed psychopathologies of everyday life in America. The operative method, wielded with a scalpel throughout this body of salvos, stories, poems, put-downs, and fake advice, keeps the illness distinct from the treatment. In the legal system, after all, the punishment does not fit the crime so much as it manufactures reasons to acquiesce to it; likewise, in medicine, “treatment options” that reach out of the wound are someone else’s ideas about the nature of the illness. To get into the diagnostic frame of mind, just call up a few gauzy scenes from your last visit to a U.S. hospital. Or consider that, next to prisons, barracks, and churches, hospitals are the institutions most prone to enforce our submission to absolute authority. All those masks, Latinate insignia, and robes—they front a veritable epidemic of errors, unnecessary surgeries, addictive medications, failing devices, and, oh yes, infections. Falling mentally ill is itself virtually a crime now, judging

Journal

The Baffler – MIT Press

Published: Jul 1, 2014

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