Sociological Satire: Writing Fiction to Depict Alternative Paradigms in Mental Health Treatment

• In Event: 1429 - Informal Discussion Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 1. Satire in Sociological Writing

Abstract

This roundtable will focus on transitioning from writing theoretical and quantitative sociological research papers in my field, sociology of mental health, to alternatively doing qualitative sociology in the form of fiction. The goal of this mode of writing is to depict sociological phenomena involving mental health treatments in a satirical manner. I specifically focus on changes in particular paradigms governing mental health treatment modalities over time. Previously, I have written sociological accounts of changes in psychoanalytic treatment that occurred when psychoanalysis shifted from a focus on upper middle class patients in the private sector to working class patients seen in community mental health centers (Richman, 1985). Additionally, I co-authored a paper on overall shifts in mental health treatments including the shift from a main emphasis on psychotherapy to one primarily devoted to medication management (Langman and Richman, 1987). I am currently writing a satirical short story which encompasses vignettes of treatments ranging from marital therapy to humanistic psychotherapies, such as those encompassing guided imagery, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The satirical element involves the depiction of discrepancies between “ideal types of practice” and what actually occurs such as a case of marital therapy involving a flirtation between the marital therapist and a member of the couple ostensibly being helped to improve their marriage or humanistic treatments which are based on mysticism more than on “science”. The material I draw on comes from working in an environment, a department of psychiatry, where clinical faculty in the past (when psychoanalysis rather than biological psychiatry predominated) were all in mental health treatment themselves and liberally shared their own treatment experiences. I also draw from my own experiences in a variety of psychotherapeutic modalities.
This roundtable aims to draw other sociologists who may have an interest in exploring sociological phenomena through fictional writing.

Author

• Judith A. Richman, University of Illinois at Chicago