The Insanity of Place / The Place of Insanity: Essays on the History of Psychiatry

This book brings together many of the major papers published by Andrew Scull in the history of psychiatry over the past decade and a half. Its historiographic essays provide a critical perspective on such major figures as Michel Foucault, Roy Porter and Edward Shorter, and subsequent chapters examine some of the major substantive debates in the field from the eighteenth century to the present. Chapters on psychiatric therapeutics and on the shifting social responses to madness over a period of almost three centuries add to a comprehensive assessment of Anglo-American confrontations with madness in this period, and make the book invaluable for those concerned to understand the psychiatric enterprise. The Insanity of Place/The Place of Insanity will be of interest to students and professionals of the history of medicine and of psychiatry, as well as sociologists concerned with deviance and social control, the sociology of mental illness and the sociology of the professions.

Andrew Scull is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego.