Madness: Ideas About Insanity

235 Pages·2017·1.179 MB·English

by  Peter Morrall

Madness
This book is an introduction to the uncertainties and incongruities about
madness. It is aimed at all of those who are curious about this subject whether
out of general inquisitiveness or because it is part of a formal course of study.
Using real case studies in order to explain, humanise, and bring to life
the subject, Peter Morrall critically analyses how madness has been and is
understood, or perhaps misunderstood. By contrasting past and present people
who have been perceived as mad and/or perceive themselves as mad, Morrall
presents core ideas about madness and critiques their would-be robustness in
explaining the specific madness of the person in question, as well as their general
relevance to madness overall.
Unlike many of its contemporaries, the book does not adhere to a perspective,
but rather remains skeptical about the ideas of all who profess to understand
madness, whether these emanate from sociology, psychology, psychotherapy,
anthropology, ‘anti’ psychiatry, or the biological sciences of contemporary
‘scientific-psychiatry’.
This book will inform and stimulate the thinking of the reader, and challenge
those with preconceived ideas about madness.
Peter Morrall is an Associate Professor of Health Sociology at the University
of Leeds, UK, who focuses on constructive critiques of the meaning of madness,
madness and murder, and psychotherapy. He also rides motorbikes, sings, and
plays the saxophone, but (so far) not all three at once.

Madness
Ideas About Insanity
Peter Morrall
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 P. Morrall
The right of Peter Morrall to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Morrall, Peter author.
Title: Madness : ideas about insanity / Peter Morrall.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046394| ISBN 9781138905511 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781138905528
(pbk) | ISBN 9781315695839 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Mental illness--Case studies. | Mentally ill--Case
studies.
Classification: LCC RC465 .M68 2017 | DDC 616.89--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046394
ISBN: 978-1-138-90551-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-90552-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69583-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by HWA Text and Data Management, London
In memory of my mother Sheila Morrall
and friend Ray Graham
(neither cuius erant copiose sanus)

Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Madness manufactured 12
2 Incarceration and control 46
3 Sane insanity 80
4 Insane society 115
5 Science and psychiatry 152

Conclusion 187
Bibliography 191
Index 218
aCknowledgeMents
Thank you to the editorial staff at Routledge, in particular Grace McInnes, Louisa
Vahtrick, Carolina Antunes and Ed Needle for their support and patience, to
colleagues and friends Pauline Philips, Gordon Teal, Karl Jarvis, Siobhan Hugh-
Jones and Mike Hazelton, for their corrections and encouragements. Thank
you also to the huge number of students from many different disciplines who
have participated in my ‘madness’ courses over the last twenty years at Leeds
University.
IntroduCtIon
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they
outvoted me.
Nathaniel Lee, 1684, quoted in Porter, 1987, p.3
Nathaniel Lee was a moderately well-known seventeenth-century playwright
who became more well-known for the above pithy insight that madness may not
be all it seems. The intention of this book is to present and scrutinise a selection of
past and present ideas,1 including those of the mad themselves, which purport to
understand madness. The book is aimed at those for whom the subject of madness
is part of a course of study, for example, in sociology, anthropology, psychology,
psychotherapy, psychiatric/mental health nursing, general medical practice and
psychiatry. It is also of relevance to anyone else who is curious about this subject.
The idea of madness held by Nathaniel Lee seems to be that what madness is
and who is mad depends on the eye of the beholder. In his case, the beholders not
only voted him mad but incarcerated him for five years in the London madhouse
of ‘Bedlam’ (Porter, 1987). Here he was ‘blistered’. Blistering consisted of
shaving off the patient’s head-hair and applying substances such as mustard
powder to inflame the skin in an attempt to re-balance his ‘humors’. Humors
are the bodily fluids thought by the Ancient Greeks to be responsible for four
modes of temperament: miserableness (melancholic), irritability (choleric),
peaceable (phlegmatic), and optimistic (sanguine). What his physician, Edward
Tyson, hoped was that Lee’s madness would be drawn out of him through the
pus which formed when the blisters became infected. Eventually discharged
from Bedlam he was to die at the age of 43 years having been run over by a coach
after falling over in the street while drunk (Arnold, 2008).
As early as the eighth century in the Islamic world, there were institutions
which accepted the insane. These were elementary hospitals called ‘maristans’