Madness: A Brief History (21 page)

The question of fashionable diseases underpins the account of hysteria in Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G. S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter,
Hysteria Beyond Freud
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1993). Cheyne’s book is reproduced as
The English Malady; or, A Trea.tise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds, with the Author’s Own Case
(London: G. Strahan, 1733; repr. edn., ed. Roy Porter, Routledge, 1991).

The madness and genius debate is further debated in G. Becker,
The Mad Genius Controversy
(London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978). For degenerationism, see Daniel Pick,
Faces ofDegenerntion: A European Disorder, 0.1848-1918
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and Tony James’s
Dream, Creativity a,nd Madness in Nineteenth Century France
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and for today’s discussions, see Kay Redfield Jamison’s
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
(New York: Free Press, 1993), Oliver Sacks’s
A Leg to Stand On
(London: Duckworth, 1984), Louis A. Sass’s
Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), and George Pickering’s
Creative Malady,
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974).

The growing centrality of women to psychiatry over the last couple of centuries is superbly handled in Elaine Showalter’s
The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980
(New York: Pantheon Press, 1986)—Yannick Ripa,
Women and

Madness: The Incarceration of Women in Nineteenth Century France,
trans. Catherine Menage (Cambridge: Polity Press in Association with Basil Blackwell, 1990) is good for France.

Chapter 5: Locking up the mad

For a brief survey, with extensive references, of institutionalization, see Roy Porter, ‘Madness and its Institutions’, in Andrew Wear (ed.),
Medicine in Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 277-301. The key analyses are Foucault (see above) and Andrew Scull,
Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England
(London: Allen Lane, 1979)—this has appeared in revised form as
The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700—1900
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993). For the USA, consult David Rothman,
The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971) and Gerald Grob,
The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of American’s Mentally Ill
(New York: Free Press, 1994); and for France, Robert Castel,
L’Ordre Psychiatrique: L’Age d’Or d’Aliénisme
(Paris: Maspéro, 1973; Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1976); English trans. W. D. Halls,
The Regulation of Madness: Origins of Incarceration in France
(Berkeley: University of California Press; Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); and Françoise and Robert Castel and Anne Lovell,
The Psychiatric Society
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

A pioneering account of one distinctively English sector was William Llewellyn Parry-Jones,
The Trade in Lunacy: A Study of Private Madhouses in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). A recent study of the oldest institution of all is Jonathan Andrews, Asa Briggs, Roy Porter, Penny Tucker, and Keir Waddington,
The History ofBethlem
(London: Routledge, 1997), while mad-doctoring is explored in Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey,
Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

‘Moral treatment’ and ‘moral therapy’ form the core of Anne Digby,
Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796-1914
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). George Ill’s case is expertly analysed in Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter,
George III and the Mad Business
(London: Allen Lane, 1969). Institutional psychiatry for rich and the poor can be contrasted through Charlotte MacKenzie’s
Psychiatry for the Rich: A History of Ticehurst Private Asylum, 1792—1917
(London and New York: Routledge, 1993) and Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine’s
Psychiatry for the Poor, 1851. Colney Hatch Asylum, Friern Hospital 1973: A Medica.l and Social History
(London: Dawsons, 1974). The ‘myth’ of Pinel is exploded in Dora B. Weiner, ‘
“Le Geste dePinel
”: The History of a Psychiatric Myth’, in Mark Micale and Roy Porter (eds.),
Discovering the History of Psychiatry
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 343-470.

For today’s more nuanced accounts of the complex forces behind institutionalization, the following are illuminating: Peter Bartlett,
The Poor Law of Lunacy: Administration of Pauper Lunatics in Nineteenth-Century Engla.nd
(London: Cassell Academic, 1998); Peter Bartlett and David Wright (eds.),
Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750—2000
(London and New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, 1999); Leonard D. Smith,
Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth-Century England
(London: Cassell, 1999); and Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe (eds.),
Insanity, Institutions and Society: New Research in the Social History of Madness, 1800—1914
(London:

Routledge, 1999). World perspectives on institutionalization are offered in Roy Porter and David Wright (eds.),
The Confinement of the Insane in the Modern Era: International Perspectives
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Chapter 6: The rise of psychiatry

Enlightenment orientations of British psychiatry are explained in Roy Porter,
Mind Forg’d Manacles: Madness and Psychiatry in England from Restoration to Regency
(London: Athlone Press, 1987; paperback edn., Penguin, 1990) and Akihito Suzuki, ‘An Anti-Lockean Enlightenment?: Mind and Body in Early Eighteenth-Century English Medicine’, in Roy Porter (ed.),
Medicine and the Enlightenment
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 226-59. The roles of Pinel, Esquirol, and the tradition leading to Charcot are penetratingly discussed in Jan Goldstein,
Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

Nineteenth-century German psychiatry is clarified in numerous writings by Otto Marx: ‘German Romantic Psychiatry: Part 1 ’,
History of Psychiatry,
i (1990), 351-80;
idem,
‘German Romantic Psychiatry: Part 2’,
History of Psychiatry,
ii (1991), 1-26;
idem,
‘Nineteenth Century Medical Psychology: Theoretical Problems in the Work of Griesinger, Meynert, and Wernicke’,
Isis,
61 (1970), 355-70;
idem,
‘Wilhelm Griesinger and the History of Psychiatry: A Reassessment’,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
, 46 (1972), 519-44. For neurasthenia, consult Janet Oppenheim,
‘Shattered Nerves’: Doctors, Patients and Depression in Victorian England
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Roy Porter (eds.),
Cultures of Neurasthenia: From Beard to the First World War
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001 ).

For the specialty of forensic psychiatry, most illuminating are Roger Smith’s
Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981) and Joel Peter Eigen’s
Witnessing Insanity: Madness and Mad-Doctors in the English Court
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); a comprehensive but flawed survey is Daniel N. Robinson’s
Wild Beasts and Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Extracts from nineteenth-century English psychiatric texts may be found in Vieda Skultans,
Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth Century
(London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).

Chapter 7: The mad

Autobiographical writings of ‘mad’ people have been anthologized and surveyed in Dale Peterson (ed.),
A Mad People’s History of Madness
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982); Michael Glenn (ed.),
Voices from the Asylum
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974); Allan Ingram,
Voices of Madness: Four Pamphlets, 16831796
(Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1997) and Roy Porter (ed.),
The Faber Book of Madness
(London: Faber, 1991; paperback 1993). Some attempt at reproducing their ‘view’ is offered in Roy Porter,
A Social History of Madness: Stories of the Insane
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987).

Specifically for Margery Kempe, see
The Book of Margery Kempe
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985)—for an attempt to understand her against the background of the religious beliefs of the time, see P. R. Freeman
et al.,
‘Margery Kempe, a New Theory: the Inadequacy of Hysteria and Postpartum Psychosis as Diagnostic Categories’,
History of Psychiatry,
i (1990), 169-90. For John Perceval see J. T. Perceval,
A Narrative of the Treatment Received by a Gentleman, During a State of Mental Derangement
(London: Effingham Wilson, 1838). For Clifford Beers, see Clifford Beers,
A Mind That Found Itself: An Autobiography
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981) and Norman Dain,
Clifford W. Beers: Advocate for the Insane
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980); and for James Tilley Matthews see John Haslam,
Illustrations of Madness
(London: Rivingtons, printed by G. Hayden, 1810); ed. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1988).

Chapter 8: The century of psychoanalysis?

On Kraepelin and his tradition, see German Berrios and Renate Hauser, ‘Kraepelin’, in German E. Berrios and Roy Porter (eds.),
A History of Clinical Psychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders
(London: Athlone, 1995), 280-91 and E. Engstrom, ‘Institutional Aspects in the Development of Emil Kraepelin’s Nosology’, in ibid. 292-301. Relevant too is G. E. Berrios and H. L. Freeman (eds.),
Alzheimer a.nd the Dementias
(London: Royal Society of Medicine Services Limited, 1992). For Nazi psychiatry, see Geoffrey Cocks,
Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Freud studies are now so extensive and intricate as to defy summary. The best sympathetic biography remains Peter Gay’s
Freud: A Life for Our Time
(London: Dent, 1988); the most iconoclastic account is Jeffrey M. Masson’s
The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983). Some approaches to Freud are canvassed in John Forrester, ‘ “A Whole Climate of Opinion”: Rewriting the History of Psychoanalysis’, in Mark Micale and Roy Porter (eds.),
Discovering the History of Psychiatry
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 174-90; Forrester assesses the modern Freudian debate in
Dispatches from the Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and its Passions
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). The wider question of the unconscious is handled in a masterly way in Henri F. Ellenberger’s
The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry
(New York: Basic Books, 1970); while essential background for understanding Freud is to be found in Mark Micale,
Approaching Hysteria: Disease and its Representations
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). For the psychoanalytical movement, see Joseph Schwartz,
Cassandra’s Daughter: A History of Psychoanalysis in Europe a.nd America
(London: Allen Lane, 1999), and specifically for Jung, see John Kerr,
A Most Dangerous Method
(London: Sinclair Stevenson, 1993) and Frank McLynn,
Carl Gustav Jung
(London: Bantam Press, 1996).

Twentieth-century therapeutics form the subject of Elliot S. Valenstein’s
Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness
(New York: Basic Books, 1986), and Jack Pressman’s
Last Resort: Psychosurgery a,nd the Limits of Medicine
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

For the attack on the asylum, see Andrew Scull,
Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant—A Radical View,
2nd edn. (Oxford: Polity Press; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984); see also Peter Barham,
From the Mental Patient to the Person
(London: Routledge, 1991), and
idem, Closing the Asylum: The Mental Patient in Modern Society
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1992).

Many aspects of the British story are covered in German Berrios and Hugh Freeman (eds.),
150 Years of British Psychiatry, 
1841-199
¹
(London: Gaskell, 1991) and Hugh Freeman and German Berrios (eds.),
150 Years of British Psychiatry,
vol. ii:
The Aftermath
(London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone, 199
⁶⁾
.

There is now a large literature on shell shock and the ubiquitous theory of ‘trauma’ which has emerged from it. See Edward M. Brown, ‘Creating Traumatic Emotional Disorders Before and During World War I’, in German Berrios and Roy Porter (eds.),
A History of Clinical Psychiatry: The Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders
(London: Athlone, 1995), 501-8, Harold Merskey, ‘Shell Shock’, in German Berrios and Hugh Freeman (eds.), 
150 Years of British Psychiatry, 1841-1991
(London: Gaskell, 1991), 245-67, Ben Shepherd,
A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994
(London: Cape, 2001), and, most recently, the wide-ranging work ed. Mark Micale and Paul Lerner,
Traumatic Pasts: Histories, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Depression and related conditions are covered in Edward Shorter,
From Paralysis to Fatigue. A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era
(New York: Free Press, 1992);
idem
,
From the Mind into the Body: The Cultural Origins of Psychosomatic Symptoms
(New York: Free Press, 1994), and Andrew Solomon,
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
(London: Chatto & Windus, 2001 ).