Mirrors of Madness (Social Problems and Social Issues (Walter Paperback)) Book

Mirrors of Madness depicts the social-psychological processes and institutional consequences of psychiatric staffs' experience of "closet insanity" and "reverse role modeling." "Closet insanity" refers to the staffs' private worries about their own social and psychological competence. "Reverse role modeling" is the staffs' identification with their labeled psychotic clients' public behavior - which closely mirrors and amplifies their own private problems. Staff strategies to ward off the threat involved in these processes include vigilance toward their own behavior and redirection of insecurities toward their clients in the form of derogatory humor and psychiatric evaluations. These strategies - which also form the core of psychiatric work activity - generate a negative self-fulfilling prophecy resulting in the failure of social control agencies like prisons and mental hospitals to carry out their manifest function to rehabilitate those entrusted to them.