The History of Mental Illness

The Early History of "Madness"

• The Ancient Greeks: The Role of Culture and Medicine in Assessing Madness
• Medieval and Renaissance Madness: Christianity and Religious Madness
• Madness in the Age of Reason: Scrutinizing Religious Madness and Witchcraft
• Confinement of the Insane: Early Lunatic Asylums and the "Great Confinement"

Psychiatric "Techniques"

• Psychotherapeutics and "Moral" Methods to Treat the Mentally Ill
• The Purpose of the Madhouse: Interpersonal Dynamics and Saving the Divided Self
• Reform and Failure: The Institutionalization of the Mentally Ill in England and USA

Modern Psychological Medicine

• Classifying Mental Illness: The Differentiation between Psychoses and Neuroses
• Deviancy, Degeneration and Schizophrenia
• Impact of Psychotropic Drugs (1950s)
• "Decarceration" Policies in Britain and United States