O istorie culturală a nebuniei

Andrew Scull asks how people have viewed madness worldwide. He starts in ancient times and reaches the present. He looks at states that people link with madness. These include loss of reason and touch with reality. They also include distress that does not go away. This book is a history of culture. It is for readers drawn to mental illness. It also speaks to those drawn to society and the past.

Scull looks beyond the medical view so widespread today. He explores faith and beliefs in forces beyond nature. He looks at ideas based on the mind or society. What has madness meant? How have people faced its effects? He moves from views in the Bible to Freud’s ideas. He covers Bedlam and asylums of the Victorian age. He also covers humoral theory and today’s drug treatments.

Scull grounds this wide view in people’s lives. He draws on Avicenna, Charcot, and Freud. He also includes van Gogh and Dalí. How did ancient and medieval groups deal with psychosis? Scull explores their ways of coping with it. Those past ways still raise questions. Brain scans and drugs used in psychiatry have not settled them.

Anacaona Mîndrilă‑Sonetto translated this edition. It has 128 pictures. These include 44 colour plates.