Lecture 8: The History of Madness

Question 1

Who is known for “freeing the insane”?

Answer 1

Philippe Pinel

Question 2

What is Pinel often presented as?

Answer 2

The hero of mental health reform in France

Question 3

What is Pinel known for?

Answer 3

He is seen as the one who had brought a more compassionate form of care for the insane and mentally ill

Question 4

Panel’s form of compassionate care was part of the overall narrative for what in society that the___Revolutionaries advocated for?

Answer 4

Overall narrative of liberty and progression in all spheres of society that the French Revolutionaries advocated for.

Question 5

What were some of the reforms during the French revolution?

Answer 5

-Modern institutions formed (healthcare, education, judicial, etc.)

Question 6

Why was there a need to reform hospitals?

Answer 6

because they were akin to prisons

Question 7

What did Michel Foucault publish in 1961?

Answer 7

History of Madness

Question 8

What does Michel Foucault challenge in History of Madness? What does he look at?

Answer 8

• Challenges the common narrative of freedom–do the reforms free the insane or do they simply place them into a different system of control and dominance.
• He tries to look at madness and insanity through a historical lens

Question 9

What does Foucault try to see could be seen as indicators of what was reason and ‘correct’ knowledge during those time periods?

Answer 9

understandings of madness

Question 10

Who was the main scholastic philosophers?

Answer 10

• Aristotle

- Al Kindi

Question 11

What is European Scholastic Philosophy based on readings and interpretations of?

Answer 11

the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle which were then transported into middle eastern philosophy by arabic philosophers such as Al Kindi

Question 12

What was it important to note about cities such as Baghdad during the European ‘Dark Age’ (5th to 10th centuries AD)?

Answer 12

That they were major flourishing cultural and scientific capitals. Many philosophic and scientific advances took place there that were later translated into Europe.

Question 13

Who was scholastic philosophy the worldview of?

Answer 13

the Medieval

Question 14

Who were the three christian scholastic philosophers?

Answer 14

• Thomas Aquinas
• Peter Aberlard
• William of Ockham

Question 15

What kind of worldview did Christian scholastic philosophy constitute?

Answer 15

a coherent and complete worldview

Question 16

Christian scholastic philosophy was a christian re-reading of___.

Answer 16

Aristotle

Question 17

What kind of logic was christian scholastic philosophy based on? Describe please.

Answer 17

-Based in a strict deductive logic–a logic that was itself based in Christian scripture and in the teachings of Apostles and different Christian saints.

Question 18

What was christian scholastic philosophy based in?

Answer 18

A worldview which tried to tie or connect all aspects of the human world to the heavy word of God.

Question 19

What does Christian scholastic philosophy trie dot represent our human world as?

Answer 19

Having some logical purpose in God’s Grand Scheme of Salvation.

Question 20

What did christian scholastic philosophy function to create and to justify?

Answer 20

• Create things like social order

- Justify the divine right of kinds

Question 21

What did Foucault argue about the scholastic form of reason in the 1480s?

Answer 21

That it undergoes a change as some people begin to question these teachings and their absolute truth.

Question 22

Why were some people dissatisfied with the scholastic form of reason?

Answer 22

With what this system of knowledge can explain or simply how this system perpetuates a social order that privileges the clergy and nobility.

Question 23

What did Desiderius Erasmus question?

Answer 23

the catholic church

Question 24

What did Martin Luther create?

Answer 24

his own church

Question 25

Who is Heronimous Bosch (what did he create/believe)?

Answer 25

The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (1494)
-In this painting, Bosch is point out that the supposed doctors surrounding the patient are more insane than the patient (what he is ultimately pointing to is that the knowledge of the experts–scholastic knowledge–is mad/insane). .

Question 26

How was madness viewed in scholastic wisdom?

Answer 26

-feared
-an evil omen
-sent from the dark abyss
-a sign of demonic presence and possession
and, at the same time, seen in an inverse as:
-form of secret and sacred knowledge passed down by the angels and God in the form of prophesy

Question 27

What did madness become in the late 15th century?

Answer 27

• an object of store and comedy
• jokingly seen as being a part of Scholasticism and of Christian logic
• seen as belonging to or as an outcome of accumulating useless or pointless knowledge (becomes increasingly associated with the knowledge of the church during this time)

Question 28

What began to develop in the early 17th century?

Answer 28

a new social order

-a new reason for the existence of the state with a goal to police and manage the population

Question 29

What the government realize during the 17th century?

Answer 29

that they are able to change and improve the population of their countries through different laws, programs, and policies
-health, education, and ultimately the wealth of the nation

Question 30

What was one of the reasons that the state needed a new reason for existence?

Answer 30

divine right of kings had disappeared

Question 31

What was one of the main missions or prerogatives of the State during the 17th century?

Answer 31

Insuring that people work, that they are employed, and the they are able to participate in the already emerging Capitalist economy

Question 32

What are biopolitics?

Answer 32

The state becomes fascinated and obsessed with the health and the bodies of individuals; controlling the lives of people all the way down to their biological nature

Question 33

Who argued that during the 17th century we saw the birth of biopolitics? (he also coined the term).

Answer 33

Foucault

Question 34

If one of the main concerns of the state and purposes of life for the common person during the 17th century was to work, what happened to those who refused to work or were unable to work?

Answer 34

they were deemed as insane

Question 35

What did Foucault argue happened during the 17th century?

Answer 35

That during this time period qualities like ‘being sane’, ‘being rational’ and ‘being reasonable’ become aligned with this imperative of ‘working’ or of ‘being employed’. The flip side is that those who don’t want to work or are unable to work become associated with the madness of all things unreasonable–with unreason itself.

Question 36

What did Foucault argue was established during the 17th century (the idea of something)?

Answer 36

That during this time, the very idea of ‘normalcy’ or of the ‘normal’ is established.

Question 37

Since the early middle ages, kings and princes spent large amounts of money and effort to construct so called___houses or___colonies all over Europe.

Answer 37

• lazar

- leper

Question 38

Briefly it was believed that leprosy was a punishment for what two things?

Answer 38

sin and vice

Question 39

What was believed had to happen in order to “improve the chances at salvation” of those suffering from leprosy?

Answer 39

taken them out of the society that corrupted them

Question 40

By which century had leprosy mostly disappeared from Europe? Why?

Answer 40

• 15th century

- partly because of the quarantine and segregation measures of the Lazar houses

Question 41

What were the Lazar houses converted into by the 17th century?

Answer 41

‘hospitals’ although they would be closer to what we know as prisons today

Question 42

What were the hospitals of the 17th century used to confine?

Answer 42

the poor, beggars, and those deemed to be mad or insane (those who did not work)

Question 43

In the 17th century, what was it believed that needed to happen in order to help society in regards to those who did not work?

Answer 43

In the absence of any other way to deal with the social problems that such people were perceived to create, it was reasoned that to improve society, what needed to be done was to lock these people away and segregate them from society.

Question 44

What was the obligation to work viewed as?

Answer 44

as an obligation to God himself and as an obligation to king and country

Question 45

Was this form of confinement based on this moralized imperative of ‘work’ and ‘labour’ that developed during the 17th century something that was in place in previous times?

Answer 45

No, it was a completely new invention

-(rationality behind confinement)

Question 46

What was the confinement of those who did not work a sign of?

Answer 46

the new emerging governmental reason and logic of biopolitics

Question 47

How was madness conceptualized in the 17th century?

Answer 47

There is no longer any attempt to justify or rationalize madness. Madness is no longer reasoned with. Rather it is completely excluded fro society both at the level of thought and ideas and physically in the form of confinement.

Question 48

If reason is the presence of thought an knowledge, what does madness become in the 17th century?

Answer 48

unreason–a void empty of thought and empty of knowledge

Question 49

What did Foucault argue was really at issue during the revolution?

Answer 49

that it was finally recognized that putting beggars, criminals, sexual deviants, the physically handicapped together with the mad and insane was problematic.

Question 50

By 1790 what plans were underway by the Old Regime?

Answer 50

to separate the mad from the non-mad by creating hospitals specifically to house the mad and the insane

Question 51

What does the further separation of the mad and insane in the 18th century detail in comparison to how they were viewed in the 17th century?

Answer 51

that madness was no longer being associated with idleness or the imperative of work as it was in the 17th century

Question 52

What did Pinel believe about madness when it was segregated properly?

Answer 52

tha tit could be objectively studied in detail and its true nature could be revealed

Question 53

By the 18th century, unlike the 17th century, madness is believed to have a___or___.

Answer 53

nature or cause

Question 54

Who was Samuel Tuke?

Answer 54

• Quaker, reformer, philanthropist

- moral retreat

Question 55

What lead Samuel Tuke to envelope his view?

Answer 55

encountered women with dementia and not able to function. Becomes ill wth typhoid and fever causes lapse of reason but then passes and momentary lapse of reason disappears

Question 56

What did Tuke propose madness was?

Answer 56

the result of human civilization. That the overexpose of the hustle and bustle of society triggers a response that renders them mad or insane

Question 57

How did the role of confinement change with Tuke?

Answer 57

its purpose becomes that of reducing madness–subduing it so that the reason hide underneath it can once again take control.

Question 58

What did Tuke call his form of treatment? What did Pinel call the same form of treatment?

Answer 58

-Tuke: moral treatment

Pinel: traitement moral

Question 59

For Pinel, what did moral treatment consist of?

Answer 59

a moral devoid of religion, a morality which depended on secular values borrowing from the philosophy of the of Descartes and Montesquieu

Question 60

What did the moral regime create?

Answer 60

a system where once again the lunatic enters the asylum, all of their actions and everything that they do is judged on a relative scale of insanity. Once in he asylum, the lunatic fell into a sort of endless trial for which the asylum provided the police, the prosecutors, the judges, and the executions. There was no way out and no way to prove tat you were in fact, sane.

Question 61

What was the paradox that this ‘moral treatment’ creates?

Answer 61

• To escape madness and regain reason, a person had to be confined in one of these asylums.
• If they were to return to civilization, they would go mad again.
• And so the only way they could be free (have their sanity) is if they were confined.

Question 62

What did we see in regards to insanity in the later half the 19th century?

Answer 62

the development of metal illness as an actually mental illness. As a ‘disease’ of the body and the physical mind–the brain, in other words.

Question 63

A bit earlier in the 19th century, what did those like Charles Darwin part associating different human emotions and dispositions as being?

Answer 63

inherently part of a biological or evolutionary character–different emotions, things like laughing or crying were positioned a inherently pat of our species. They built upon already existing and well famed ‘science’ of phrenology.

Question 64

What is phrenology?

Answer 64

tied different physical and facial features (like nose size) to different dispositions and charter traits like conscience, self-esteem, and logic.

Question 65

By the end of the 19th century, which to individuals began to identify madness as mental illness and as a disease of the physical brain rathe than a disorder of the spirit or soul?

Answer 65

Those like Jean-Martin Charcot and his student Sigmund Freud.

Question 66

What does madness turn into in the late 19th century and early 2-th century?

Answer 66

a medical disease

Question 67

What is madness reduced to in the late 19th and early 20th century?

Answer 67

Reduced to the individual and reduced to an individual illness of that person’s particular brain

Question 68

What happened in the late 19th and early 20th century in regards to how the treatment of mental illness was viewed?

Answer 68

As something that can be treated and cured in the same way that we cure other disease of he body. The medical gaze begins to be applied to the individual in the case of mental illness just as it was applied in cases of the pox, plague, and scirrhous (cancer).