Pushbutton Psychiatry – A Cultural History of Electric Shock Therapy in America, Updated Paperback Edition
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 stages: 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.
About Timothy Kneeland (Buffalo, New York Author)
Timothy W. Kneeland was born and raised in East Aurora, New York outside of Buffalo. He earned a B.A. in history from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in history from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in the history of science from the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD. in history from the University of Oklahoma. He has been teaching at the college level since 1989, first in the Oklahoma City area, then in Greenville, Illinois, and since 2000 at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.
Dr. Kneeland is married to Laura, who was born and raised in Cheektowaga, New York. The couple met while Timothy was working at Bryant & Stratton Eastern Hills Mall. They have four children, all of whom still live in Western New York.
Dr. Kneeland has published widely on topics in politics and the presidency, the history of science and psychiatry, and in natural disaster history and policy. He has finished a book lenth study of Hurricane Agnes which caused devastation across the U.S. in 1972 and is working on a study of how snow became a natural disaster after the Blizzard of 1977 that struck Buffalo, New York.
