Pushbutton Psychiatry: A Cultural History of Electric Shock Therapy in America, Updated Paperback Edition

by Timothy W. Kneeland, Carol A.B. Warren

This volume uncovers the roots of electroshock in America, an outgrowth of western patriarchal medicine with primarily female patients. The authors trace the history of electroshock in the United States in three historic from an enthusiastic reception in 1940, to a period of crisis in the 1960s, to its resurgence after 1980. Early American experiments with electrical medicine are also examined, while the development of electroshock in America is considered through the lens of social, political, and economic factors. The revival of electroshock in recent decades is found to be a product of growing materialism in American psychiatry and the political and economic realities of managed medical care. The new material in the Updated Paperback Edition describes the resurgence of electroshock in the private psychiatric sector as a treatment of choice for depression.

164 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 3, 2016

About the author

Timothy W. Kneeland is a Professor and Director of the Center for Public History at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York. He is the author of Pushbutton Psychiatry: A Cultural History of Electroshock in America (2002; 2008), Democrats and Republicans on Social Issues (2016), The Buffalo Blizzard of 1977 (2017), Playing Politics with Natural Disaster: Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 Election, and the Origins of FEMA (2020), Declaring Disaster: The Buffalo Blizzard of '77 and the Creation of FEMA (2021), and The Routledge History of American Science (2022). In addition to teaching and writing, Dr. Kneeland provides political analysis for local media in Upstate New York.