Module Content and Indicative Topics

This course explores the ways in which madness has been understood, treated and portrayed. It opens up debates concerning madness and its relation to ‘divine madness’ and inspiration in the Western tradition, and how these have continually recurred through history. It reconstructs the rise of psychiatry as a would be scientific branch of medicine at the end of the eighteenth century, with a promise of humane treatment and refuge, and how alongside this, a counter-tradition of magnetism and hypnotism arose, with the aim of utilising altered states of consciousness for therapeutic ends. It follows the expansion of notions of psychopathology to encompass increasingly large sectors of society, accompanied by new psychological therapies, which generated not only new conceptions of illness, but new notions of well-being. It looks at the renewed debate in the 1960s concerning the medical understanding of madness, which raised questions concerning the status of psychiatry itself. Alongside professional developments, it highlights how writers responded to, reformulated and appropriated new models of madness. The course will be accompanied by a madness reading group of four sessions.

Teaching Delivery

The course will be presented in an interactive seminar format, illustrated with material from fictional and documentary films. Students will be expected to read selected primary and secondary historical and literary texts in advance of each session (all required readings will be available on the moodle site).

This module has historically been popular. If you try to register on this module, we would advise exploring additional options, just in case.

By the end of the module, you should be able to understand the historical contexts of our understandings of madness and mental health, and the evolution of modern psychiatry and psychotherapy. It will also help you think critically about how these conditions are conceptualised and treated in the present.

Recommended Reading

Eghigian, Greg ed., The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Madness and Mental Health, (London, Routledge, 2017).

Roy Porter. Madness: A Brief History, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002).
Andrew Scull. Madness: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011).