Madness: A Brief History

by Roy Porter

Overview

This fascinating story of madness reveals the radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the present day. Roy Porter explores what we really mean by 'madness', covering an enormous range of topics from witches to creative geniuses, electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, psychoanalysis to prozac. The origins of current debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of those treating patients, writers, artists, and the mad themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191622281
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	03/13/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	983,483
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

The most highly-acclaimed and prolific medical historian of this generation. Roy Porter was a well-known and widely respected author of over 80 books, the most recent being the much reviewed Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (Penguin, 2000). He published extensively in the history of psychiatry, including A Social History of Madness (Weidenfeld&Nicolson, 1987; Paperback edition, 1989); The Faber Book of Madness (Faber, 1991; paperback 1993). He was Professor of the Social History of Medicine at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London; and had extensive experience of popular public lecturing, broadcasting, and serious journalism.

Table of Contents

	List of illustrations	xi
1	Introduction	1
2	Gods and demons	10
3	Madness rationalized	34
4	Fools and folly	62
5	Locking up the mad	89
6	The rise of psychiatry	123
7	The mad	156
8	The century of psychoanalysis?	183
9	Conclusion: modern times, ancient problems?	215
	Further reading	219
	Index	234

Editorial Reviews

Highly acclaimed medical historian Porter traces changes in attitude toward madness all the way from prehistoric beliefs in demonic possession to the contention of some modern theorists that mental illness simply does not exist.... A small book that raises big questions about the profession of psychiatry and the notion of scientific progress.

Kirkus Reviews

Combines the appeal of history as narrative with the intellectualstimulation derived from cogent analysis. ...[Madness] will engage both general readers and psychiatry students with its sparkling prose.

No branch of medicine faces as much popular skepticism as psychiatry. In this readable yet rigorous little book with a global slant, Porter (social history of medicine, University Coll., London; The Greatest Benefit to Mankind) addresses that controversy by recounting the history of mental illness from antiquity to modern times. A wealth of facts and literary references illuminate how people went from believing that supernatural forces cause mental illness to their reliance on more rational and naturalistic explanations, culminating in today's combination of the medical and psychosocial models. Porter also discusses topical issues, including the relationship between lunacy and creativity; the drive to institutionalize, which peaked in the mid-20th century; the rise and demise of psychoanalysis; and the development of the antipsychiatry movement. This book combines the appeal of history as narrative with the intellectual stimulation derived from cogent analysis. Less comprehensive than Edward Shorter's A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac but more academic than Alex Beam's Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital, it will engage both general readers and psychiatry students with its sparkling prose and a well-annotated bibliography. Highly recommended. Antoinette Brinkman, M.L.S., Evansville, IN Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"A brief and fascinating history of insanity."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"In just over 200 pages Porter manages to cram in everything from 7,000-year-old skulls with holes bored into them to release demons to the rise of psychopharmacology. In between we get Greco-Roman rationalism, the bloody and persistent belief that mental illness was caused by a compromised faith in God (approximately 200,000 witches killed), the rebirth of the humors (blood, choler, melancholy, and—my favorite—phlegm), institutionalization, Freudian analysis, de-institutionalization, the death of Freudian analysis (to your computers, Cambridge analysts!), and the glorification of insanity under Michel Foucault. It's a rich history, and because of Porter's delightful habit of bringing in colorful figures to fill out the story, his book seems bright even when walking the dingy halls of Bedlam."—Sunday Boston Globe

"The sudden and unexpected death of Roy Porter in March robbed the English-speaking world of one of its most prolific, colorful and talented social historians.... Madness...displays several of his virtues: his wide reading, his prodigious memory, his extraordinary capacity for synthesis, his eye for an anecdote, and the sheer fun he took in telling a story."—Nature

"A magisterial synthesis of 1,000 years of mental illness and psychiatric remedies. The book wears its learning so lightly that in an afternoon's perusal, the average reader has a genuinely informed account of what all the shouting has been about."—Toronto Globe and Mail

"This small book is rich in detail yet never loses sight of the broader ebb and flow in society's beliefs about what constitutes mental illness."—Houston Chronicle

"Combines the appeal of history as narrative with the intellectual stimulation derived from cogent analysis.... Will engage both general readers and psychiatry students with its sparkling prose."—Library Journal

"Highly acclaimed medical historian Porter traces changes in attitude toward madness all the way from prehistoric beliefs in demonic possession to the contention of some modern theorists that mental illness simply does not exist.... A small book that raises big questions about the profession of psychiatry and the notion of scientific progress."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher