Jacqueline Hopson

Discipline: English

Project Summary

Psychiatrists, psychologists and related professionals have a strange place in fiction.  These supposed care-givers, frequently represented in novels, are usually believed to have insight into the conscious and unconscious mind, and into normal and abnormal psychology.  Fictional psychiatrists et al may be thaumaturges or criminal villains. Rarely are they presented simply as doctors caring for their patients.  

I am exploring a wide range of fictional depictions including literary fiction, crime novels and comics to gain an overview and understanding of the special fictional role of the psychiatrist.

Supervisory Team

Dr Laura Salisbury, English

Dr Alison Haggett, History

Wider Research Interests

Medical Humanities, history of psychiatry, Jewish fiction, Native American fiction.

Authored Publications/Reports

Hopson, Jacqueline and Holmes, Jeremy (11th April 2011) Through the wasteland: chronic depression, British Medical Journal, BMJ 2011;342:d93

Jacqueline Hopsn (1st August 2014) The demonisation of psychiatrists in fiction (and why real psychiatrists might want to do something about it), The Psychiatric Bulletin, August 2014: 38, 175-179

Jacqueline Hopson (May 2014) Madness and Literature Website: Review of Indecent Acts by Nick Brooks, Madness and Literature Website

Hopson, Jacqueline (8th August 2016) When a novel changes a social system: Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit (1946) and the US state psychiatric hospital, British Association of American Studies, USSOnline, August 2016

Raj Persaud, Jacqueline Hopson (13th July 2014) Raj Persaud talks to Jacqueline Hopson on YouTube, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do9buP7JlvU

Jacqueline Hopson (1st September 2011) One Good Year, Part 1, Life in a Therapeutic Community, Bethlem Blog (Bethlem Hospital Archives and Museum)

Jacqueline Hopson (12th September 2011) One Good Year, Part 2, Life in a Therapeutic Community, Bethlem Blog (Bethlem Hospital Archives and Museum)

Jacqueline Hopson (Eds Baker, Shaw and Biley) (2013) Not Dying: Scattered Episodes, Our Encounters with Self-Harm, Item 11