Perceptions of Lunacy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

• Main Author: Donnelly, M. J.
• Published: Birkbeck (University of London) 1977
• Subjects: 361
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.453829

This is a stucly of the forme.tive period of w.eG.ical :ps;ychology, the disci -oline \:;hich p:.:·eceedecl and prepared the groued for modern psychiatry. It is based primarily on British materials, and concerns roughly the period fran 1790 to 1845· From this vc:-;.nte.ge tl1e study tries to recount certe.i11 of t'::1e conditions, both L1sti tu tional and i<leological, uncl.er which the ne1v discipline of neclical psychology energec'.. The first section G.escribes schematically the historic shift in social policies toward the insane which initiated the era of Dente>l institutions. In tl1e late eighteenth century there were few asylumE; in :3ri tain, or other resiclential esocablishments reserveu specifical for the insane; by the late nineteenth ~entury, however, there was a national system of lunatic asyluns and hospitals, which catered for the majority of insane patients 2.ncl cons ti ccutecl the treatment of choice for nen;;,r forms of ins ani t3r. 'i'he c~evelopELent of separate ::Cwspi tc:_ls 2.nd a.syluins for the ':Thic~'l culmina tecl in the -'unac;;r Acts of 1845. Charters ii a.nCJ_ iii s~etch certain of the pervasive ideological concerns which shaned the progra~~~e of ~i~eteenth-century lunacy reform, and which made the new psycholocical techniques of medical psychology distinctive. Chapter iv presents a critical survey of the extant statistics of insanj_ ty, an~- tries to infer something of the contenporary character of •madness' and the social characteristics o~ its victir.1s. The balance of the study presents other, less systematic con·seLlJJOrar;;r reJ)resenta/cions of the insane and the several -uroa<ier cul tura.l themes which 'ilere ge:c-:ma"ne to t:wir definition. ihe 'problem of the irratio~al ·~oral influence•, were in particular ways each themes pertinent to the 1_:nders ta.nding of maclne s c:. ':Che greo.ter part of t11e s tud~r t:L1us col1cerns current