State of Madness

The inherent slipperiness of diagnostic categories such as 'schizophrenia' is the subject of Rebecca Reich's fascinating and impressively nuanced new study.

* Times Literary Supplement *

Reich's work is a significant contribution to both the literary discourse of mental illnesses and the literary interpretations of the Soviet 'different thinkers' of the post-Stalin era. It is a well-structured book which effectively proves its premises, sustaining the readers' interest until the end by illustrating the literary analyses with medical interviews and biographical episodes.

* Canadian Slavonic Papers *

[Reich] offers a new and sophisticated take on the subject by approaching it from the perspectives of literature and of dissenters' engagement with the psychiatric discourse.... her book makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of punitive psychiatry and dissent in the USSR

* History of Psychiatry *

By applying a formal literary analysis to clinical documents, Reich convincingly demonstrates that the discipline of psychiatry was structured according to an 'established aesthetic framework' borrowing from the 'literary doctrine of Socialist Realism.' Psychiatrists framed their diagnostic practices as a kind of artistic endeavour and pathologised aesthetic modes that deviated from the standards of Socialist Realism.

* History of the Human Sciences *

With readings of both psychiatric and literary texts through cultural studies lenses, Reich has illuminated the literary discourse that permeated psychiatric reasoning during the period. She makes a vital contribution to the study of this feature of the Soviet police state after Stalin.

* Isis *

Psychiatric incarceration as a form of repression against dissidents belongs to the staples of the history of the Soviet human rights movement. Rebecca Reich's study contributes to a reexamination of this question from an interdisciplinary perspective, as she navigates skillfully among the literary, historical, and medical realms.

* Kritika *

A fascinating study.... While socially and politically specific, the exploration of psychiatric abuse and dissident responses also benefits in Reich's interdisciplinary study from a longer perspective that considers the theme of madness in the Russian literary tradition.

* Slavic Review *

In this historically-framed, detail-rich literary analysis of the understanding and influence of psychiatry in the Soviet Union after Stalin, Reich offers an excellent starting point for, and lasting contribution to, our understanding of the transition of Soviet society in the second half of the twentieth century.

* The Russian Review *

At times zooming in to the level of parts of speech in a poem, at others expanding outward to the broad historical factors at work in the post-Stalin era, Reich offers a thorough and engrossing story of this battle of wills fought in examination rooms and in samizdat publications.

* The Slavonic and East European Review *

State of Madness provides discerning analysis of important texts on madness, describing how literature confronted the official version of madness. In so doing, Reich provides a compelling explanation of how the Soviet State pathologized dissent in the late Soviet period.

* AATSEEL Publications Committ