Author: Benjamin Reiss
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226709655
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
In the mid-1800s, a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums—many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. Theaters of Madness explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum’s place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity. Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture—from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare—into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement. Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, Theaters of Madness prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.
Theaters of Madness
Author: Benjamin Reiss
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226709655
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
In the mid-1800s, a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums—many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. Theaters of Madness explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum’s place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity. Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture—from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare—into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement. Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, Theaters of Madness prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226709655
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
In the mid-1800s, a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums—many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. Housed in magnificent structures with lush grounds, patients participated in theatrical programs, debating societies, literary journals, schools, and religious services. Theaters of Madness explores both the culture these rich offerings fomented and the asylum’s place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity. Benjamin Reiss explores the creative lives of patients and the cultural demands of their doctors. Their frequently clashing views turned practically all of American culture—from blackface minstrel shows to the works of William Shakespeare—into a battlefield in the war on insanity. Reiss also shows how asylums touched the lives and shaped the writing of key figures, such as Emerson and Poe, who viewed the system alternately as the fulfillment of a democratic ideal and as a kind of medical enslavement. Without neglecting this troubling contradiction, Theaters of Madness prompts us to reflect on what our society can learn from a generation that urgently and creatively tried to solve the problem of mental illness.
The Architecture of Madness
Author: Carla Yanni
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816649396
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816649396
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 218
Book Description
Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session
On the Writing of the Insane
Author: G. Mackenzie Bacon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
On the Writing of the Insane: With Illustrations by G. Bacon Mackenzie, first published in 1870, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
On the Writing of the Insane: With Illustrations by G. Bacon Mackenzie, first published in 1870, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.
The Cost of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Author: Alice Mauger
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319652443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
This open access book is the first comparative study of public, voluntary and private asylums in nineteenth-century Ireland. Examining nine institutions, it explores whether concepts of social class and status and the emergence of a strong middle class informed interactions between gender, religion, identity and insanity. It questions whether medical and lay explanations of mental illness and its causes, and patient experiences, were influenced by these concepts. The strong emphasis on land and its interconnectedness with notions of class identity and respectability in Ireland lends a particularly interesting dimension. The book interrogates the popular notion that relatives were routinely locked away to be deprived of land or inheritance, querying how often “land grabbing” Irish families really abused the asylum system for their personal economic gain. The book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century Ireland and the history of psychiatry and medicine in Britain and Ireland.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319652443
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
This open access book is the first comparative study of public, voluntary and private asylums in nineteenth-century Ireland. Examining nine institutions, it explores whether concepts of social class and status and the emergence of a strong middle class informed interactions between gender, religion, identity and insanity. It questions whether medical and lay explanations of mental illness and its causes, and patient experiences, were influenced by these concepts. The strong emphasis on land and its interconnectedness with notions of class identity and respectability in Ireland lends a particularly interesting dimension. The book interrogates the popular notion that relatives were routinely locked away to be deprived of land or inheritance, querying how often “land grabbing” Irish families really abused the asylum system for their personal economic gain. The book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century Ireland and the history of psychiatry and medicine in Britain and Ireland.
Asylums
Author: Erving Goffman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351327747
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426
Book Description
A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and, mental hospitals, in particular. The main focus is, on the world of the inmate, not the world of the staff. A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. Each of the essays in this book were intended to focus on the same issue--the inmate's situation in an institutional context. Each chapter approaches the central issue from a different vantage point, each introduction drawing upon a different source in sociology and having little direct relation to the other chapters. This method of presenting material may be irksome, but it allows the reader to pursue the main theme of each paper analytically and comparatively past the point that would be allowable in chapters of an integrated book. If sociological concepts are to be treated with affection, each must be traced back to where it best applies, followed from there wherever it seems to lead, and pressed to disclose the rest of its family.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351327747
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426
Book Description
A total institution is defined by Goffman as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated, individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example, providing we appreciate that what is prison-like about prisons is found in institutions whose members have broken no laws. This volume deals with total institutions in general and, mental hospitals, in particular. The main focus is, on the world of the inmate, not the world of the staff. A chief concern is to develop a sociological version of the structure of the self. Each of the essays in this book were intended to focus on the same issue--the inmate's situation in an institutional context. Each chapter approaches the central issue from a different vantage point, each introduction drawing upon a different source in sociology and having little direct relation to the other chapters. This method of presenting material may be irksome, but it allows the reader to pursue the main theme of each paper analytically and comparatively past the point that would be allowable in chapters of an integrated book. If sociological concepts are to be treated with affection, each must be traced back to where it best applies, followed from there wherever it seems to lead, and pressed to disclose the rest of its family.
So Far Disordered in Mind
Author: Richard W. Fox
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520310179
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Between the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and the Great Depression in 1929 the San Francisco Superior Court committed more than 12,000 city residents to the insane asylums of California. Who were these people? What brought them to the attention of the court, and what behavior did the medical examiners cite as evidence of insanity? What do these commitments reveal about the social and cultural meaning of insanity and other forms of deviant behavior in industrial California--and by extension in the rest of urban America in the early twentieth century? This book--the fist historical study of insanity to analyze thousands of court commitment records--provides an original look at the social, institutional, and professional web in which deviant individuals were officially judged "so far disordered in mind" that they were "dangerous to be at large." A full two-thirds of all those committed were, to judge by the court records, "odd," "peculiar," or simply "immoral" individuals who displayed no symptoms indicating severe disability, or violent or destructive tendencies. However surprising this fact may seem, it is not at all unexpected in view of the expressed function of insane asylums in the late nineteenth century. As early as the 1850's, and continuing into the twentieth century, asylum superintendents bewailed the role state law required them to play: that of managers of enormous warehouses for "drunkards, simpletons, fools," "the aged, the vagabond, the helpless." Local communities made liberal use of state asylums, where at no cost to themselves, potentially troublesome citizens could be detained. Only after World War I did local "mental hygiene" clinics and urban psychopathic wards begin to spring up. The rise of new institutions (clinics and wards) and new professions (psychiatry and psychiatric social work) in cities like San Francisco by the 1920's marked a decisive turning point. No longer was social policy uniformly based upon the need to place disturbed or disturbing individuals in massive state asylums. Today we are feeling the full effect of the change in policy that began in the 1920's. California has led the nation in the effort to shut down hospitals and replace them with community mental health centers. This study makes a start at examining the early, transitional years during which the new policy first emerged in the dreams of psychiatric reformers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520310179
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Between the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and the Great Depression in 1929 the San Francisco Superior Court committed more than 12,000 city residents to the insane asylums of California. Who were these people? What brought them to the attention of the court, and what behavior did the medical examiners cite as evidence of insanity? What do these commitments reveal about the social and cultural meaning of insanity and other forms of deviant behavior in industrial California--and by extension in the rest of urban America in the early twentieth century? This book--the fist historical study of insanity to analyze thousands of court commitment records--provides an original look at the social, institutional, and professional web in which deviant individuals were officially judged "so far disordered in mind" that they were "dangerous to be at large." A full two-thirds of all those committed were, to judge by the court records, "odd," "peculiar," or simply "immoral" individuals who displayed no symptoms indicating severe disability, or violent or destructive tendencies. However surprising this fact may seem, it is not at all unexpected in view of the expressed function of insane asylums in the late nineteenth century. As early as the 1850's, and continuing into the twentieth century, asylum superintendents bewailed the role state law required them to play: that of managers of enormous warehouses for "drunkards, simpletons, fools," "the aged, the vagabond, the helpless." Local communities made liberal use of state asylums, where at no cost to themselves, potentially troublesome citizens could be detained. Only after World War I did local "mental hygiene" clinics and urban psychopathic wards begin to spring up. The rise of new institutions (clinics and wards) and new professions (psychiatry and psychiatric social work) in cities like San Francisco by the 1920's marked a decisive turning point. No longer was social policy uniformly based upon the need to place disturbed or disturbing individuals in massive state asylums. Today we are feeling the full effect of the change in policy that began in the 1920's. California has led the nation in the effort to shut down hospitals and replace them with community mental health centers. This study makes a start at examining the early, transitional years during which the new policy first emerged in the dreams of psychiatric reformers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
The Confinement of the Insane
Author: Roy Porter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521802062
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
This collection of essays explores the development of the lunatic asylum, and the concept of confinement for those considered insane, in different national contexts over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leading scholars in the field of medical history have contributed extensive primary research through individual case studies in the context of the legal, social, economic, and political situations of thirteen different countries. The book represents the first truly international history of the mental hospital, and is, therefore, a landmark comparative study in the history of medicine.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521802062
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
This collection of essays explores the development of the lunatic asylum, and the concept of confinement for those considered insane, in different national contexts over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leading scholars in the field of medical history have contributed extensive primary research through individual case studies in the context of the legal, social, economic, and political situations of thirteen different countries. The book represents the first truly international history of the mental hospital, and is, therefore, a landmark comparative study in the history of medicine.
Child Insanity in England, 1845-1907
Author: Steven Taylor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137600276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This book explores the treatment, administration, and experience of children and young people certified as insane in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It uses a range of sources from Victorian institutions to explore regional differences, rural and urban comparisons, and categories of mental illness and mental disability. The discussion of diverse pathways in and out of the asylum offers an opportunity to reassess nineteenth-century child mental impairment in a broad social-cultural context, and its conclusions widen the parameters of a ‘mixed economy of care’ by introducing multiple sites of treatment and confinement. Through its expansive scope the analysis intersects with topics such as the history of childhood, institutional culture, urbanisation, regional economic development, welfare history, and philanthropy.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137600276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This book explores the treatment, administration, and experience of children and young people certified as insane in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It uses a range of sources from Victorian institutions to explore regional differences, rural and urban comparisons, and categories of mental illness and mental disability. The discussion of diverse pathways in and out of the asylum offers an opportunity to reassess nineteenth-century child mental impairment in a broad social-cultural context, and its conclusions widen the parameters of a ‘mixed economy of care’ by introducing multiple sites of treatment and confinement. Through its expansive scope the analysis intersects with topics such as the history of childhood, institutional culture, urbanisation, regional economic development, welfare history, and philanthropy.
The Invention of Madness
Author: Emily Baum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655824X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing the complex and convoluted ways in which “madness” was transformed in the Chinese imagination into “mental illness.” Focusing on typically marginalized historical actors, including municipal functionaries and the urban poor, The Invention of Madness shifts our attention from the elite desire for modern medical care to the ways in which psychiatric discourses were implemented and redeployed in the midst of everyday life. New meanings and practices of madness, Baum argues, were not just imposed on the Beijing public but continuously invented by a range of people in ways that reflected their own needs and interests. Exhaustively researched and theoretically informed, The Invention of Madness is an innovative contribution to medical history, urban studies, and the social history of twentieth-century China.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655824X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing the complex and convoluted ways in which “madness” was transformed in the Chinese imagination into “mental illness.” Focusing on typically marginalized historical actors, including municipal functionaries and the urban poor, The Invention of Madness shifts our attention from the elite desire for modern medical care to the ways in which psychiatric discourses were implemented and redeployed in the midst of everyday life. New meanings and practices of madness, Baum argues, were not just imposed on the Beijing public but continuously invented by a range of people in ways that reflected their own needs and interests. Exhaustively researched and theoretically informed, The Invention of Madness is an innovative contribution to medical history, urban studies, and the social history of twentieth-century China.
Madness and Civilization
Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.