Patient Tales

"Patient Tales is a thorough analysis of the uses of narrative in psychiatry, based on the historical documentation of single case reports from the earliest known medical records of British asylums to the clinical case conferences in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Captivating renditions of late 18th- and early 19th-century case histories allow the reader to watch the history of inpatient psychiatry to unfold."—American Journal of Psychiatry

"In its focus on the narrative roots of the psychological and psychiatric case history, Patient Tales not only contributes to our understanding of this important genre, it also adds to our understanding of rhetorical and epistemological power of narrative in the human sciences. Carol Berkenkotter's fine-grained analysis, at both the macro and micro level, is a model for textual and historical research in the rhetoric of science."—Debra Journet, University of Louisville

"Berkenkotter presents a fascinating study of the genre of psychiatric case histories, tracing the shifting rhetorical contexts that have shaped the varying incarnations of the genre. She argues convincingly that the psychiatric case history has not evolved like other science genres but has shifted radically with changing paradigms and practices in the field of psychiatry. Genre theorists, rhetoricians, and historians of medicine will find her work a highly readable history of the external factors and individual innovations that have transformed the textual accounts of patients whose words are their symptoms."—Jeanne Fahnestock, University of Maryland