The Evolution of “Madness”: A Journey “through Time,” Part One

Abstract

Read through most histories of psychiatry, and a very simple story emerges— one that psychiatry promulgates as truth and which predisposes us to see the “modern” psychiatrist as the inevitable heir to an honorable tradition. The story begins with a brief nod to what existed “pre-psychiatry.” Overwhelmingly, what is viewed as medical is seen as progressive, as scientific, as humane. Correspondingly, what is identified with earlier players is seen at best as a prelude to psychiatry and, more typically, as brutal, as a veritable darkness which the medical doctor was called upon to dispel with the light of “his” truth. From doctors quite rightfully objecting to the burning of witches, the tale constructed is one of cumulative progress, all made by great white men whose actions are essentially liberatory and whose “discoveries” are formative. It is essentially linear, with one “discovery” leading to the next, the culmination being the medical model as we know it (e.g., Bynum, 1983).