The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness - Hardcover

"Breathtaking! Cahalan's brilliant, timely, and important book reshaped my understanding of mental health, psychiatric hospitals, and the history of scientific research. A must-read for anyone who's ever been to therapy, taken a brain-altering drug, or wondered why mental patients were released in droves in the 1980s. And a thrilling, eye-opening read even for those who thought they weren't affected by the psychiatric world."-- Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead and Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

"Susannah Cahalan has written a wonderful book that reflects years of persistent and remarkable historical detective work. The Great Pretender is an extraordinary look at the life of a Stanford professor and a famous paper he published in 1973, one that dramatically transformed American psychiatry in ways that still echo today. The book is fast-paced and artfully constructed--an incredible story that constitutes a tribute to Cahalan's powers as both a writer and a sleuth."-- Andrew Scull, author of Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity

"Cahalan researched The Great Pretender over the course of five years, but the pages practically turn themselves. It's absorbing, sometimes sobering, sometimes seriously funny. Cahalan's narration makes the reading great fun, with an urgency occasionally akin to a thriller."--Shelf Awareness

"The Great Pretender is a tight, propulsive, true-life detective story which somehow also doubles as a sweeping history of our broken mental health-care system. Cahalan herself has experienced this system as both a patient and a reporter, and her background informs every fascinating page of this dogged investigative odyssey. It is an amazing achievement, and there is no question it will go down as the definitive account of one of the most influential psychology experiments of all time."-- Luke Dittrich, New York Times bestselling author of Patient H.M.

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Books of 2019 Pick

"Gripping [and] vivid...A well-told story fraught with both mystery and real-life aftershocks that set the psychiatric community on its ear...Cahalan follows all the leads like a bloodhound. Her pursuit reads like a well-tempered mystery being picked apart, with tantalizing questions for which many of the answers are just out of reach."--Kirkus

"Fascinating...Cahalan sets a new standard for investigative journalism...Her impeccable inquiry into the shadowy reality of Rosenhan's study makes an urgent case that the psychological and psychiatric fields must recover the public trust that 'Rosenhan helped shatter.'"--Publishers Weekly

"Bold, brave, and original, THE GREAT PRETENDER grips you as tightly as the madness it investigates. Cahalan writes with enormous intelligence and style, and propels you through this dark and fascinating journey into psychiatry and the very nature of sanity."--Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book

"People have asked me over the years: If they liked The Psychopath Test, what should they read next? I now have an answer. THE GREAT PRETENDER is such an achievement. It is a wonderful look at the anti-psychiatry movement and a great adventure--gripping, investigative--and is destined to become a popular and important book."--Jon Ronson, New York Times bestselling author of The Psychopath Test and So You've Been Publicly Shamed

"A masterpiece of historical reconstruction...an intellectual detective story [and] a towering critique of our systems of mental health-care. If I could've written this book, I would have."--Ron Powers, New York Times bestselling author of No One Cares About Crazy People

"One of America's most courageous young journalists" and the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Brain on Fire investigates the untold history of the shocking experiment that revolutionized modern medicine (NPR).

For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness--how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people--sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society--went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.

But, as Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?