About Roy Richard Grinker
Roy Richard Grinker, Ph.D. is a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and Editor-in-chief of Anthropological Quarterly. He is the author of Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, among other books.
Roy Richard Grinker was born and raised in Chicago where his father, grandfather, and great grandfather practiced psychoanalysis. He received his B.A. in anthropology at Grinnell College in 1983, his M.A. in social anthropology at Harvard University in 1985, and his Ph.D. in social anthropology in 1989.
Roy Richard Grinker has conducted research on hunter-gatherers in central Africa, North Korean defectors in South Korea, and the epidemiology of autism. In 2008, his book Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism was the recipient of the National Alliance on Mental Illness KEN award for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of mental illness.”
Unstrange Minds was inspired by his daughter, Isabel, who was diagnosed with autism in 1994. The book documents Grinker’s global quest to discover the surprising truth about why autism is so much more common today. In the process, he made controversial discoveries that both his understanding of autism and his relationship with his daughter.
Building on Unstrange Minds, and based on research in Africa, Asia, and the U.S., his new book, Nobody’s Normal, tells the uplifting story of how we are successfully challenging the stigma that has long shadowed mental illnesses.
Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma.
For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental illness stigma―from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy.
Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Roy Richard Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity.
Roy Richard Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity.
Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.
From autism to anorexia, people with mental illnesses or neurodivergent brains have long experienced stigma. The extent of what they endure depends on their culture—for example, some Nepalis are placed in restraints, and some Americans are incarcerated when they should be in treatment—but for centuries, humans have placed less value on humans who need more help. In fact, mental illness categories were first invented in Europe during the industrial revolution, to separate those who were not productive workers.
“We’ve long idealized the autonomous individual, dignified those who produce the most capital, and stigmatized those who produce the least,” writes anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker. In the fascinating and illuminating Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, Grinker explores the origins of this stigmatization.
Much of how Americans think about mental illness stems from the traumas of war and our nation’s woeful response to troops’ needs. At the beginning of World War II, the U.S. Army only had 35 psychiatrists, most of whom were doctors with minimal training in mental health. In 1973, Vietnam veterans began lobbying for more attention to their psychological needs, as they experienced homelessness, substance use disorder and depression.
Yet even as society began recognizing mental illness as a real issue, there remained significant controversy about how to treat it. Grinker recalls the grim midcentury period when a neurologist in Washington, D.C., performed thousands of lobotomies by inserting an ice pick into patients’ eye sockets. His patients included Rosemary Kennedy, who was institutionalized for the remainder of her life after this surgery.
Pharmaceuticals have, of course, helped individuals with mental illness live fulfilling and stable lives, and Grinker explores how the use of drugs and therapy has evolved over time. His compassion shines through in this meticulously researched and carefully written book, a passionate call for humans to think about how we view those with mental illness. “Of course, it is impossible to end stigma completely—every society can find something to demean and marginalize,” Grinker writes. “But we can still resist, name, mute, and shape it. Stigma is not a thing but a process, and we can change its course.”
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