The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness

· Canongate Books
Ebook
400
Pages
Eligible
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About this ebook

'Destined to become a popular and important book' Jon Ronson
'Fascinating' Sunday Times

In the early 1970s, Stanford professor Dr Rosenhan conducted an experiment, sending sane patients into psychiatric wards; the result of which was a damning paper about psychiatric practises. The ripple effects of this paper helped bring the field of psychiatry to its knees, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.

But what if that ground-breaking and now-famous experiment was itself deeply flawed? And what does that mean for our understanding of mental illness today? These are the questions Susannah Cahalan asks in her completely engrossing investigation into this staggering case, where nothing is quite as it seems.

About the author

Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. She lives in Brooklyn.

@scahalan | susannahcahalan.com

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