Femi Oyebode – författare

The concept of doppelgänger, or 'double' – a conceived exact but sometimes invisible replica of a living person – has fascinated and intrigued people for centuries. This notion has a long history and is a widespread belief among cultural groups around the world. Doppelgängers have influenced literature and cinema, with writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Robert Louis Stevenson, and directors like Alfred Hitchcock exploring the phenomenon to great effect. This book brings together the literary and cinematic with empirical scientific literature to raise fundamental questions about the nature of the self and the human mind. It aims to establish the experience of the self and unravel the brain processes that determine bodily representation and the errors that make possible the experience of the doppelgänger phenomenon. This book will appeal to psychiatrists, neurologists, and neuroscientists, as well as interested general readers.

Rare and unusual psychiatric syndromes have fascinated people for centuries due to their complexity and undefined nature. Appreciating their clinical importance and relevance to understanding other conditions and experiences, this book provides an authoritative account of the rarest and most unusual psychiatric syndromes. The author, a leading authority on clinical psychopathology, delves into the history of the description of such syndromes, illustrates conditions with clinical case examples, and discusses the causes as well as the underlying explanatory mechanisms. The syndromes described draw attention to the way in which abnormal subjective experiences reflect the intersection of biomedical science, social anthropology, social sciences, evolutionary biology and the humanities. The book covers abnormalities of belief, abnormalities of perception, unusual experiences of the body and self, rare and bizarre impairments of memory, and behavioural disturbance. This is a valuable resource for psychiatrists, as well as researchers interested in the relationship between psychiatry and other disciplines.

What can psychiatry learn from literature? For psychiatrists, literary texts can be valuable tools for furthering our understanding of patients and their conditions. This book explores the fruitful relationships between the written word and central aspects of psychiatric practice. It includes newly commissioned chapters plus articles originally published in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment that have been reworked and updated. The contributors examine such topics as: why doctors should read fiction and the place of literature in medical education; the varied genres of autobiography, fiction, poetry and letters; and a range of topics, including addictions, ageing and dementia, intellectual disability and autism. The authors explore the description and representation of mental states, the lived experience of distress, the character of psychiatry as a system and the institutional practices of psychiatry. Although written by psychiatrists primarily for psychiatrists, this collection offers a fascinating and accessible insight into mental illness through the pages of novels, poetry and autobiographies to be found in any bookshop.

Madness at the Theatre studies the theatrical representation of madness from the classical Greek period through to the 21st century. Professor Oyebode charts the portrayal of madness by the world's great playwrights across the centuries and argues that whereas acts of madness are described but unseen in Greek drama, Shakespeare brought these behaviours to centre stage. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aberrant behaviour was portrayed in domestic settings by Ibsen - theatrical madness became a family drama. Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill drew on their own families for their explorations of madness and addiction. Pinter's masterful use of the ambiguity of language finds strong echoes in the psychiatric clinic. Soyinka emphasised the social context - the personal malady as reflection of a greater malaise in society. Finally, Sarah Kane created plays that were the physical embodiment of her inner world. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the language of drama, the depiction of mental illness, and in the wider place of madness as a concept within society.