1st Edition

The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health

Edited By Greg Eghigian Copyright 2017
    404 Pages
    by Routledge

    404 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge



    The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health explores the history and historiography of madness from the ancient and medieval worlds to the present day. Global in scope, it includes case studies from Africa, Asia, and South America as well as Europe and North America, drawing together the latest scholarship and source material in this growing field and allowing for fresh comparisons to be made across time and space.



    Thematically organised and written by leading academics, chapters discuss broad topics such as the representation of madness in literature and the visual arts, the material culture of madness, the perpetual difficulty of creating a classification system for madness and mental health, madness within life histories, the increased globalisation of knowledge and treatment practices, and the persistence of spiritual and supernatural conceptualisations of experiences associated with madness. This volume also examines the challenges involved in analysing primary sources in this area and how key themes such as class, gender, and race have influenced the treatment and diagnosis of madness throughout history.



    Chronologically and geographically wide-ranging, and providing a fascinating overview of the current state of the field, this is essential reading for all students of the history of madness, mental health, psychiatry, and medicine.

    List of figures



    List of contributors





    Introduction to the history of madness and mental health



    Greg Eghigian





    Part I. Madness in the ancient and medieval worlds





    1. Representations of madmen and madness in Jewish sources from the pre-exilic to the



    Roman-Byzantine period



    Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert





    2. Ancient Greek and Roman traditions



    Chiara Thumiger





    3. Madness in the Middle Ages



    Claire Trenery and Peregrine Horden





    Part II. Professions, institutions, and tools





    4. Healers and healing in the early modern health care market



    Elizabeth Mellyn





    5. The asylum, hospital, and clinic



    Andrew Scull





    6. The epistemology and classification of 'madness' since the eighteenth century



    German E. Berrios and Ivana Marková





    Part III. Beyond medicine





    7. Psychiatry and religion



    Rhodri Hayward





    8. Madness in Western literature and the arts



    Ilya Vinitsky





    9. Psychiatry and its visual culture, c. 1800–1960



    Andreas Killen





    Part IV. Global dimensions, colonial and post-colonial settings





    10. Madness and psychiatry in Latin America’s long nineteenth century



    Manuella Meyer





    11. Histories of madness in South Asia



    Waltraud Ernst





    12. Mad Africa



    Sally Swartz





    13. Voices of madness in Japan: narrative devices at the psychiatric bedside and in



    modern literature



    Akihito Suzuki





    Part V. Perspectives and experiences





    14. The straightjacket, the bed, and the pill: material culture and madness



    Be

    Biography

    Greg Eghigian is Associate Professor of Modern History at Penn State University. His most recent book is The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth-Century Germany (2015). He is presently writing a book on the history of the UFO phenomenon.

    "This wide-ranging collection examines the history of madness and mental illness from antiquity to contemporary pharmacology, broadening our understanding both geographically and chronologically. The authors attend carefully to the specificity of each historical context with interdisciplinary approaches that draw on the history of medicine, anthropology, emotion, law, sociology, everyday life, literature, philosophy, and religion. These accessible essays provide a valuable perspective on the lived experience of mental disorder and its interpretation relevant to scholars and students in the field and beyond."

    Dana Rabin, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

     

    " (...) The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health remains an impressive and valuable contribution to the history of madness. It has established a new benchmark that will no doubt inspire future researchers in a number of different areas of study."

    Michael Rembis, University at Buffalo (SUNY)

    "It is an excellent colleciton of essays, woven together expertly by Eghigian's introduction, which traces the history of psyhiatry and adjacent fields through their different lineages, and draws out lient themes."

    James Dunk, Health & History