Abstract
This paper provides a brief visual history of the ways women patients, and specifically women patients whose marital status is identified in conjunction with their “illness,” have been constructed as abnormal in the images of advertisements designed to promote psychotropic medications to an audience of psychiatrists. The advertisements I discuss come from the two largest circulation American psychiatric journals, The American Journal of Psychiatry and Archives of General Psychiatry, between the years 1964 and 2001. I use the ads to focus on two concomitant narratives. On one hand, I show how the advertisements situate the rise of “wonder drugs” in the context of an era described as the “golden age of psychopharmacology,” during which time drug treatments helped revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, depression, and other outpatient mental illnesses in the United States. On the other hand, the advertisements also illustrate the ways in which these new scientific treatments could not function free of the culture in which they were given meaning. In the space between drug and wonder drug, or between medication and metaphor, the images thus hint at the ways psychotropic treatments became imbricated with the same gendered assumptions at play in an American popular culture intimately concerned with connecting “normal” and “heteronormal” when it came to defining the role of women in “civilization.”
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, F., & Selesnick, S. (1966). The history of psychiatry. New York: Harper.
Altschule, (1953). Body physiology in mental and emotional disorders. New York: Grune.
Ayd, F. (1991). The early history of modern psychopharmacology. Neuropsychopharmacology, 5(2), 71–84.
Balter, M. et al. (1974). Cross-national study of the extent of anti-anxiety/sedative drug use. New England Journal of Medicine, 290, 769–774.
Cant, G. (1976, Feb. 1). Valiumania. New York Times Magazine, 34–54.
Chambers, C. (1972). An assessment of drug use in the general population. In J. Sussman (Ed.), Drug use and social policy (pp. 50–61). New York: AMS Press.
Cooley, D. (1956, January). The new nerve pills and your health. Cosmopolitan, p. 70.
Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. New York: W. W. Norton.
Corrodi, H. et al. (1967). The effect of some psychoactive drugs on central monoamine neurons. European Journal of Pharmacology, 1, 363–368.
Courtney, A., & Whipple, T. (1983). Sex stereotype in advertising. Massachussetts: Lexington Books.
Douglas, S. (1994). Where the girls are: Growing up female with the mass media. New York: Times Books.
Garb, T. (1993). Gender and representation. In F. Frascina (Ed.), Modernity and modernism: French painting in the nineteenth century (pp. 219–290). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Goffman, E. (1979). Gender advertisements. London: Macmillan Press.
Hawkins, J.W., & Aber, C. S. (1988). The content of advertisements in medical journals: Distorting the image of woman. Women and Health, 14(2), 45.
Hayle, N. G. Jr. (1995). The rise and crisis of psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985. New York
Healey, D. (1997). The antidepressant era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Johnson, J. (1973). Lesbian nation: The feminist solution. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Josephson, S. (1996). From idolatry to advertising: Visual art and contemporary culture. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Koedt, A. (1971). Lesbianism and feminism. Notes from the third year: Women's liberation. New York: Radical Feminists.
Kramer, P. (1994). Listening to Prozac. New York: Penguin.
Levy, R. (1994). The role and value of pharmaceutical marketing. Archives of Family Medicine. 3, 327–332.
Listening to Eli Lilly. (1994, March 31). Wall Street Journal, B-1.
Manheimer, D. et al. (1968). Psychotherapeutic drugs. California Medicine, 109, 445–451.
Merriam, E. (1958, Nov. 8). The matriarchal myth, or The case of the vanishing male. The Nation, 331–5.
Mulvey, L (1981). Afterthoughts...Inspired by “Duel in the Sun.” Framework, 15–17, 12–15.
Nathanson, C. (1980). Social roles and health status among women: The significance of employment. Social Science and Medicine, 16, 1781–1789.
Parry H., et al. (1973). National patterns of psychotherapeutic drug use. Archives of General Psychiatry, 28, 769–738.
Parry, H. (1968). Use of psychotropic drugs by U.S. adults. Public Health Reports, 83, 799–810.
Special report: Women in revolt. (1970, Mar. 23). Newsweek, 70.
Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press.
The American male: Why do women dominate him. (1959, March). Look, 40–45.
The new feminists: Revolt against sexism. (1969, Nov. 21). Time, 53–56.
The personality pill. (1993, Oct. 1). Time, 53.
The promise of prozac. (1990, Mar. 26). Newsweek, 39.
The politics of sex: Kate Millet of women's lib. (1977, Aug. 31). Newsweek, 31.
Schlessinger, A. Jr. (1959, Jan.). The crisis in American masculinity. Esquire, 69–75.
Smith, M.C. (1985). Small comfort: A history of the minor tranquilizers. New York: Praeger.
Thompson, E. (1979). Sexual bias in drug advertisements. Social Science and Medicine, 13A, 187–191.
Unsettling facts about the tranquilizers. (1958, Jan.). Consumer Reports, 4.
Wallerstein, R.S. (1991). The future of psychotherapy. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 55, 421–443.
Wallis, C. (1989, Dec. 4). Onward women! Time, 81–89.
Wong, D. T. et. al. (1974). A selective inhibitor of serotonin uptake. Life Sciences, 15, 471–79.
Wylie, P. (1955). Generation of vipers. 2nd ed. New York: Pocket Books.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Metzl, J.M. Selling Sanity Through Gender: The Psychodynamics of Psychotropic Advertising. Journal of Medical Humanities 24, 79–103 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021361900397
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021361900397