History of Psychopharmacology Essay Example

The commonly romanticised 1950s, from a modern-day perspective, has often been considered a prosperous era which witnessed the celebratory period following the Second World War, the Golden age of Hollywood and a revolutionary change in the world of modern medicine. The ‘birth of modern psychopharmacology,’ in the 1950s has often been considered a turning point within the medical profession, and yet I would argue it was also a time of evolving societal concern, as, although this landmark in 20th century science opened up a new neurological treatment pathway for psychiatrists and physicians, the introduction of widely available psychiatric drugs should be considered a phenomena which exacerbated underlying cultural, political and social anxieties . Indeed, I would argue it was in fact a period that witnessed the continuation of stereotypically gendered medical trends. Whilst I do not embark to suggest that the initial intention behind these psychotropic pharmaceuticals was that they would be used as a manipulative gender tool of oppression, I would argue that, with the popularisation of ‘happy pills’ in America, we can see that by the 1960s, consumerist culture enabled phycologists and pharmaceutical companies to benefit from women’s dependency on these tranquilising drugs.  While it can be thought that there was no consequential financial gain to be made from the gendering of the psychopharmacological revolution in the 1950s, ‘the gendered parameters of the tranquilizer market were clear by the late 1960s’ and psychotropic pharmaceuticals became a highly successful consumer sector.  Moreover, as traditionalist social anxieties emerged in the post-war period as a result of more women thriving in the work-place, it was evident that by the 1960s, tranquilisers had become a popular sedative given ‘twice as likely’ to women as a way of enforcing social control to oppress the self-actualisation of the middle-class mother.  This would indicate the intentional gender bias of the psychopharmacological revolution that took America by storm until the late 1970s. 

Wallace Laboratories introduced the first psychoactive drug, meprobamate, otherwise known as Miltown, to the medical market in 1955, and although it was introduced to help ‘people who get nervous and irritable for no good reason,’ it is evident that within a decade of the drug’s initial release it became a ‘pop culture phenomenon.’  Although it was Hollywood that first witnessed the ‘Miltown Mania,’ with Time magazine crediting it ‘the fastest-selling pacifier for the frustrated and frenetic,’ within two years of its release, one in twenty Americans had tried this ‘happy pill.’  Whilst it is clear that both men and women participated in this sudden surge in tranquiliser use, I would argue that these pills became a gendered phenomenon through the growth in consumerism and the targeted mass marketing that focused on the struggling suburban housewife. With middle-class women once again returning to the private sphere after the war, they became the main consumer of domestic goods, meaning they became the most vulnerable to the effects of the media at this time, particularly as TV advertisements, magazine articles and TV shows typically targeted the female audience. As Elaine Tyler May indicated, women in the post-war period were expected to ‘become sexually attractive housewives and consumers under the American capitalist system.’  The consumerist culture, therefore, had the potential to constantly reinforce societal ideals, including the limitations of women’s careers, women’s inferiority to their husbands and the vital importance to maintain a happy household. This presents the argument that the middle-class woman, although positioned considerably higher in society than the lower working-classes and ethnic minorities, became victims of the pervasion of media and were vulnerable to its ‘considerable power to shape opinion and belief, change habits of life, actively mould behaviour and impose political systems.’  This suggests that the reinforcement of hegemonic and gender-restrictive messages from the media may have had a detrimental impact upon the mental health of suburban middle-class women in American society in the 1950s and 60s, contributing towards the feeling of unworthiness and inferiority within women in this period. It is unsurprising, then, that the suburban housewife turned to the use of tranquilisers as a means of escapism from the pressures of societal ideals. As Bridget O’Keefe has indicated, although gendered roles effected men and children in the 1950s and 60s ‘the preservation of the nuclear family… was highly dependent on women in their traditional roles as wives and mothers’ as it was their responsibility to raise ‘the next generation of Americans.’  It would have been foreseeable, therefore, that women across the nation suffered from what Betty Friedan has famously described as ‘the problem that has no name,’ turning to these new psychotropic drugs to find a sense of fulfilment.  My focus on the white, middle-class, American woman, then, will allow me to present how consumerist culture targeted this specific social group, helping to promote and normalise the use of psychiatric drugs such as Miltown and Valium, known as ‘the woman’s drug,’ by the 1960s.  This, in turn, enabled pharmaceutical companies to capitalise on the psychopharmacological medical market through the manipulation of the struggling, middle-class woman.