Madness and democracy : the modern psychiatric universe / Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain ; translated by Catherine Porter, with a foreword by Jerrold Seigel
Advent, apotheosis, and failure of the asylum establishment -- pt. 2. The passions as a sketch of a general theory of mental alienation
Summary
"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."--BOOK JACKET
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-315) and index
