On his book Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
Cover Interview of December 13, 2016
In a nutshell
Madness is something whose mysteries puzzle us still. The loss
of reason, the sense of alienation from the common sense world the rest of us
imagine we inhabit, the shattering emotional turmoil that seizes hold of some
of us and will not let go: these are a part of our shared human experience down
through the centuries and in every culture. Insanity haunts the human
imagination. It has drawn the repeated attention of artists and writers, as
well as physicians and divines. It reminds us of how tenuous our own hold on
reality may sometimes be. It challenges our sense of the very limits of what it
is to be human. Even in our own time, definitive answers about the condition
remain almost as elusive as ever. The very boundaries that separate the mad
from the sane are a matter of dispute.
Madness in Civilization examines the phenomenon of
mental disturbance from Ancient Palestine to the present, looking at both
Western and non-Western societies and cultures, both medical and lay
perspectives, both religious and supernatural accounts and interventions. Madness
extends beyond the medical grasp in other ways as well. It remains a source of
recurrent fascination for writers and artists, and for their audiences. Novels,
biographies, autobiographies, plays, films, paintings, sculpture - in all these
realms and more, Unreason continues to haunt the imagination and to surface in
powerful and unpredictable ways. All attempts to corral and contain it, to
reduce it to some single essence seem doomed to disappointment. Madness
continues to tease and to puzzle us, to frighten and to fascinate, to challenge
us to probe its ambiguities and its depredations.
I seek to probe this vast territory in all its almost
infinite variety and complexity. I’m not interested in easy answers or glib
generalizations. I do not celebrate modern psychiatry, but I do try to give it
its due, and I try to remain sensitive to the fact that mental troubles are the
most solitary of afflictions to those who experience them, but the most social
of maladies given their impact on families, on communities, and on societies. My
book is enriched by almost a hundred and fifty images, many in color, and
reproduced with great fidelity. These don’t merely grace or illustrate the
text: they are a central part of the argument I present.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Madness is something whose mysteries puzzle us still. The loss of reason, the sense of alienation from the common sense world the rest of us imagine we inhabit, the shattering emotional turmoil that seizes hold of some of us and will not let go: these are a part of our shared human experience down through the centuries and in every culture. Insanity haunts the human imagination. It has drawn the repeated attention of artists and writers, as well as physicians and divines. It reminds us of how tenuous our own hold on reality may sometimes be. It challenges our sense of the very limits of what it is to be human. Even in our own time, definitive answers about the condition remain almost as elusive as ever. The very boundaries that separate the mad from the sane are a matter of dispute.
Madness in Civilization examines the phenomenon of mental disturbance from Ancient Palestine to the present, looking at both Western and non-Western societies and cultures, both medical and lay perspectives, both religious and supernatural accounts and interventions. Madness extends beyond the medical grasp in other ways as well. It remains a source of recurrent fascination for writers and artists, and for their audiences. Novels, biographies, autobiographies, plays, films, paintings, sculpture - in all these realms and more, Unreason continues to haunt the imagination and to surface in powerful and unpredictable ways. All attempts to corral and contain it, to reduce it to some single essence seem doomed to disappointment. Madness continues to tease and to puzzle us, to frighten and to fascinate, to challenge us to probe its ambiguities and its depredations.
I seek to probe this vast territory in all its almost infinite variety and complexity. I’m not interested in easy answers or glib generalizations. I do not celebrate modern psychiatry, but I do try to give it its due, and I try to remain sensitive to the fact that mental troubles are the most solitary of afflictions to those who experience them, but the most social of maladies given their impact on families, on communities, and on societies. My book is enriched by almost a hundred and fifty images, many in color, and reproduced with great fidelity. These don’t merely grace or illustrate the text: they are a central part of the argument I present.