What is it about?
Psychiatric patients often suffer from the consequences of a credibility deficit stemming from stereotypes about madness. This paper investigates a novel that depicts the lives of psychiatric clients, many of whom are administered psychotropic drugs.
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Why is it important?
My analysis shows that the depiction of drug intake contributes to the destigmatisaton of psychiatric clients. By presenting the narrator's view on the psychiatric institution both while she takes the drugs and after she discontinues them, readers are encouraged to reattribute her distorted descriptions and inaccurate judgments to the properties of the very same drugs that are supposed to help her become a regular part of society again. In this way, the novel criticises the predominance of psychopharmacology as a means to alleviate mental distress.
Perspectives
This article matters a lot to me. I am personally committed to deconstructing stereotypes about madness, which is connected to validating unique perspectives that are rarely considered.
Sandra Marzinkowski
Ruhr-Universitat Bochum
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Side-Effect Narration: Unreliable Embodiment and Ideological Repositioning in Clare Allan’s Poppy Shakespeare, October 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004519886_014.
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