Madness: A Very Short Introduction
Book 279 of Very Short Introductions
Language: English
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: Sep 2, 2011
Words:
40458
Flesch:
40.89
DDC:
616.89009
FAST Tags:
Mental illness,
Mental illness--Treatment,
Mentally ill--Care,
Psychiatry,
Mental illness--Social aspects,
Mental illness in art
LCC:
RC438
LC Genre:
Technology>Medicine>Mental disorders--history
Book Details
...
Description:
Madness is something that frightens and fascinates us all. It is a word with which we are universally familiar, and a condition that haunts the human imagination. In this Very Short Introduction , Andrew Scull provides a provocative and entertaining examination of the social, cultural, medical, and artistic responses to mental disturbance across more than two millennia, concluding with some observations on the contemporary accounts of mental illness. He shows that through the centuries, in poetry and in prose, in drama and in the visual arts, madness has been on display for all to see. He also describes how a whole industry has grown up, devoted to its management and suppression. Perhaps most important, he conveys how madness profoundly disturbs our common sense assumptions; threatens the social order, both symbolically and practically; creates almost unbearable disruptions in the texture of daily living; and turns our experience and our expectations upside down. Throughout this fascinating history, many fascinating and arresting pictures illuminate the overall portrait of madness in its various contexts.