A social history of madness: the world through the eyes of the insane

Abstract

This work is an ambitious attempt by a historian, Roy Porter, to present a social history55 of mental illness from what is an unconventional perspec tive. Unlike traditional histories on this subject, which tend to be told from the viewpoint of psychiatrists and the medical profession, this book bases its insights on a largely forgotten body of writings55 (p. 231), the published autobiographical accounts produced by the sufferers of mental illness. This unconventional focus is justified, in the author's opinion, not only as a means of gaining insight to how the mad have tried to make sense of their mental condition and the experiences they were made to endure at the hands of society and clinicians, but as an uncommon vantage point for assessing the intellectual and cultural traditions of the West that have given rise to the particular ways of thinking and acting about mental disorder. In light of the significance that Porter assigns to the views of the mad, it is disappointing that not greater care was taken in the selection of his sample population. Not only does he confine his examination to what is, by his own admission, a tiny and unrepresentative minority55 (p. 237) of relatively famous individuals from among the many hundreds who wrote about their own mental illness, but the selection suffers from a dispropor tionate emphasis on English-speaking subjects. Of the 28 cases discussed by the author, no fewer than 17 are of British or American extraction. Limitations such as these are significant shortcomings in a study that