Madness and Democracy: The Modern Psychiatric Universe

Marcel Gauchet; Gladys Swain

Published by Princeton University Press 1999

Madness and Democracy

The Modern Psychiatric Universe

Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain
Translated by: Catherine Porter
Preface by: Jerrold E. Seigel

In the series New French Thought Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400822874

Overview
Contents

About this book

How the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy is revealed in this provocative look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth-century France. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was to rest in the hands of individuals, then measures should be taken to understand the deepest reaches of the self, including the state of madness. Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain maintain that the asylum originally embodied the revolutionary hope of curing all the insane by saving the glimmer of sanity left in them. Their analysis of why this utopian vision failed ultimately constitutes both a powerful argument for liberalism and a direct challenge to Michel Foucault's indictment of liberal institutions.

The creation of an artificial environment was meant to encourage the mentally ill to live as social beings, in conditions that resembled as much as possible those prevailing in real life. The asylum was therefore the first instance of a modern utopian community in which a scientifically designed environment was supposed to achieve complete control over the minds of a whole category of human beings. Gauchet and Swain argue that the social domination of the inner self, far from being the hidden truth of emancipation, represented the failure of its overly optimistic beginnings.

Madness and Democracy combines rich details of nineteenth-century asylum life with reflections on the crucial role of subjectivity and difference within modernism. Its final achievement is to show that the lessons learned from the failure of the asylum led to the rise of psychoanalysis, an endeavor focused on individual care and on the cooperation between psychiatrist and patient. By linking the rise of liberalism to a chapter in the history of psychiatry, Gauchet and Swain offer a fascinating reassessment of political modernity.

Author / Editor information

Marcel Gauchet is the editor of Le Débat and the author of The Disenchantment of the World (Princeton). Gladys Swain was a practicing psychiatrist and the author of Dialogue avec l'insensé (Gallimard).

Reviews

A fertile interpretation of the history of the idea of insanity and of political efforts to cure the insane. . . . As much philosophy and cultural history, this work deserves a thoughtful audience.

[A] new model of the insane . . . prompted the modern understanding of the self. Furthermore, [the authors] contend, the asylum system was structured as an ideal community that crystallized the totalitarian exercise of power in postrevolutionary democratic society. . . . [S]ure to stimulate much theoretical speculation.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Jerrold Seigel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Editors' Note Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xxvii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
Abstract I: The Moment of Origin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
Part One: Advent, Apotheosis, and Failure of the Asylum Establishment
Abstract II Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
Chapter I. La Salpêtrière, or The Double Birth of the Asylum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
Chapter II. The Politics of the Asylum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Chapter III.1 Impossible Power Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	84
Chapter IV. A Socializing Machine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
Abstract III: Crisis, Agony, and Repetition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Abstract IV: Esquirol at La Salpêtrière Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Part Two: The Passions as a Sketch of a General Theory of Mental Alienation
Abstract V: Esqirol in 1805 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Abstract VI: The Clinical Resolution Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Abstract VII: Between the Will to Madness and Brain Lesions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Abstract VIII: What the Passions Make It Possible to Think (Beginning) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Chapter V. What the Passions Make It Possible to Think Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	151
Chapter VI. Reducing Insanity: The Mirror of Alterity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Abstract IX: Approaches to Healing; How to Speak to the Insane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Chapter VII. The Society of Individuals and the Institution of Speech Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Chapter VIII.The Conquest of Dissymmetry Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	194
Chapter IX. Openings and Aporia of Moral Treatment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	230
Epilogue: Social Divide, Division of the Subject, Mad Rupture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
List of Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	317

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