Panic Diaries

A Genealogy of Panic Disorder

Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Psychology, Pathological Psychology, Self Help, Mental Health, Mood Disorders
Cover of the book Panic Diaries by Jackie Orr, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jackie Orr ISBN: 9780822387367
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: March 1, 2006
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Jackie Orr
ISBN: 9780822387367
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: March 1, 2006
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

Part cultural history, part sociological critique, and part literary performance, Panic Diaries explores the technological and social construction of individual and collective panic. Jackie Orr looks at instances of panic and its “cures” in the twentieth-century United States: from the mass hysteria following the 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds to an individual woman swallowing a pill to control the “panic disorder” officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. Against a backdrop of Cold War anxieties over atomic attack, Orr highlights the entanglements of knowledge and power in efforts to reconceive panic and its prevention as problems in communication and information feedback. Throughout, she reveals the shifting techniques of power and social engineering underlying the ways that scientific and social scientific discourses—including crowd psychology, Cold War cybernetics, and contemporary psychiatry—have rendered panic an object of technoscientific management.

Orr, who has experienced panic attacks herself, kept a diary of her participation as a research subject in clinical trials for the Upjohn Company’s anti-anxiety drug Xanax. This “panic diary” grounds her study and suggests the complexity of her desire to track the diffusion and regulation of panic in U.S. society. Orr’s historical research, theoretical reflections, and biographical narrative combine in this remarkable and compelling genealogy, which documents the manipulation of panic by the media, the social sciences and psychiatry, the U.S. military and government, and transnational drug companies.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Part cultural history, part sociological critique, and part literary performance, Panic Diaries explores the technological and social construction of individual and collective panic. Jackie Orr looks at instances of panic and its “cures” in the twentieth-century United States: from the mass hysteria following the 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds to an individual woman swallowing a pill to control the “panic disorder” officially recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980. Against a backdrop of Cold War anxieties over atomic attack, Orr highlights the entanglements of knowledge and power in efforts to reconceive panic and its prevention as problems in communication and information feedback. Throughout, she reveals the shifting techniques of power and social engineering underlying the ways that scientific and social scientific discourses—including crowd psychology, Cold War cybernetics, and contemporary psychiatry—have rendered panic an object of technoscientific management.

Orr, who has experienced panic attacks herself, kept a diary of her participation as a research subject in clinical trials for the Upjohn Company’s anti-anxiety drug Xanax. This “panic diary” grounds her study and suggests the complexity of her desire to track the diffusion and regulation of panic in U.S. society. Orr’s historical research, theoretical reflections, and biographical narrative combine in this remarkable and compelling genealogy, which documents the manipulation of panic by the media, the social sciences and psychiatry, the U.S. military and government, and transnational drug companies.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book On Humor by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Mad Toy by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book The Remains of War by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Buying into the Regime by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Race and the Education of Desire by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Modern Inquisitions by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book After Spanish Rule by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Hybrid Constitutions by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Plastic Bodies by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Fat Art, Thin Art by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Making Samba by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book Writing Taiwan by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book How to Be an Intellectual in the Age of TV by Jackie Orr
Cover of the book New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Jackie Orr
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy