Modern Madness
Gareth Evans
Hutton Honors College
“Modern Madness” examines how various forms of madness have been defined and treated between 1800 and the present. We will see madness described as the result of heredity, moral degeneracy, upbringing, trauma, fatigue, and body chemistry. The asylum has been an almost constant presence over the past 200 years, and we will pay particular attention to the different ways in which patients have been treated in, or more recently denied access to, such asylums. The writers we read are from America, England, France, Germany, Martinique, and the former Soviet Union. Because the work we read is international in scope, we will look at how country, political regime, and period shape the practice of psychology and psychiatry. The class, then, though part of its title is “modern,” has less to say about contemporary views of madness than it does about the cultural, social, and political implications of madness in periods and places different from our own. To those who live in them, every period is modern. What is more, as we shall see throughout the class, definitions of madness not only change, but they are also a topic of disagreement and debate within every decade. A simple title, then, for a complex topic. Success in the class depends in part on the ability to see the world in the same way as the writers you read.
Required Reading
- Greg Eghigian, From Madness to Mental Health: Psychiatric Disorder and Its Treatment in Western Civilization
- Roy Porter, Madness: A Brief History
NOTE: Please buy physical copies of the books. No e-books. Almost everything you read is in Eghigian’s anthology. If it is not in the anthology, you’ll find it posted under either Pages or Files at Canvas.
Catalog Information: HON-H 228 INTERDEPARTMENTAL COLLOQUIA