Madmen and the Bourgeoisie: A Social History of Insanity and Psychiatry

Is it courage or folly that leads a man to write a social history of insanity? Madness has its history, as do evil and intelligence, but to tackle madness, rather than conceptions of it or the growth of the psychiatric services is a mammoth task, and one which has yet to be accomplished for this well documented age. Of central importance is the status of psychiatry: whether insanity, for example, is an illness discovered in the eighteenth century, or a social category, in medical garb, which that century created, will determine what function it is seen to have performed, and which interests to have satisfied. Yet madness need not be a discrete entity, and the social aspects of the psychoses, depression, and the more serious personality disorders may all be different and have their own history.