Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 November 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 November 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0216
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 November 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 November 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0216
Introduction
Mental disorder is a long recognized element of the human condition. Throughout history, the responses to madness have featured both condemnatory and sympathetic elements, leading to punitive measures, restrictive incarceration, or treatment with curative intent. Relatively enlightened approaches were becoming apparent in parts of Europe and the Middle East by the 16th century, notably in Spain. By the mid-18th century, the “madman” was no longer perceived generally as a wild beast that had to be tamed, but more as a person who had lost his reason and required restorative treatment. The principle became established that the achievement of recovery was most likely if the disorder was identified early and the deranged person removed from his or her normal surroundings to a specialist institution, where they could be managed and treated. Public lunatic hospitals, or asylums as they later became known, were established quite widely during the 18th century, particularly in Britain, where there were also growing numbers of private “madhouses.” Published writings on insanity multiplied and ideas on its origins and treatment became increasingly sophisticated, with psychological approaches gaining increasing prominence alongside the more traditional medically based techniques. Exposures by reformers of oppressive practices and harsh, insanitary conditions in some institutions aroused public opinion. The principles associated with “moral treatment” and “moral management” became increasingly influential on the new generations of state-sponsored lunatic asylums established in Britain, Europe, and America during the 19th century. Much benefit was anticipated from these institutions, but expectations gradually became disappointed. Rising populations, widening parameters of what constituted serious mental disorders, and the failure of many patients to recover sufficiently to be discharged, led to a steady rise in both the size and numbers of public lunatic asylums. A range of new problems and issues had to be addressed. Structures were needed to maintain order, discipline, and some semblance of therapeutic endeavor in large, often overcrowded, and increasingly impersonal institutions. The majority of works cited in this bibliography relate to Britain in the period up to the 1860s, which reflects both its prominent place and the level of attention given to British practices and institutions by historical scholars.
General Overviews
Historians have approached the subjects of mental disorder, its identification, treatment, and management, from a range of different perspectives, which might be construed variously as medical, descriptive, Whiggish, or ideological. In recent years, following the important influences of Foucault and Scull, there has been a marked reorientation toward the social, political, and cultural aspects of the history of mental disorder and its management. The medical approach, with an emphasis on the historical development of differentiated symptoms and pathologies, is exemplified by Berrios 1996. Gilman 1982 utilizes visual imagery to convey powerfully how perceptions of mental disorders and public responses to them have altered significantly over the course of several centuries. The authoritative study Porter 1987 concentrates mainly on the important developments in ideas and practices in England in the 18th-century. England is also the focus for the orthodox narrative of progress and reform since 1700 provided in Jones 1972. A more critically skeptical approach to similar historical passages is adopted in Scull 1981 and Scull 1993, while Scull 1989 goes beyond Britain and includes comparative consideration of developments in America. Foucault 2006 has been profoundly influential on both historians and a wider audience, although empirically established facts are sometimes overtaken by the intellectual sweep of the narrative.
Berrios, German E. The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology since the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
A volume intended primarily for reference by psychiatric clinicians. It identifies the contributions of early practitioners to the emerging delineations of symptomatology for the main mental disorders.
Foucault, Michel. History of Madness. Translated by Jean Khalfa. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
English translation of Histoire de la folie à l’age classique, first published in 1961. The most satisfactory English translation of Foucault’s profoundly influential text, in which he critically surveys developing perceptions of madness, legal and institutional frameworks for incarceration, technologies of control, medical dominance, and the rise of the specialist lunatic asylum. (See also Ideas on Mental Disorder and Insanity).
Gilman, Sander. Seeing the Insane: A Cultural History of Madness and Art in the Western World. New York and Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1982.
This essential volume comprises visual representations of insanity from the 16th century onwards. Gilman provides a clear and concise explanatory narrative, locating the images within their artistic and historical contexts.
Jones, Kathleen. A History of the Mental Health Services. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972.
Focused on England from 1700, Jones provides an orthodox account of changing attitudes toward mental disorder, the development of public lunatic asylums, and the consolidation of a legal framework, with an emphasis on the key 19th-century reforms.
Porter, Roy. Mind Forg’d Manacles; A History of Madness in England From the Restoration to the Regency. London: Athlone, 1987.
The key text by Roy Porter, who was the foremost authority on mental disorder during the “long” 18th century. It locates insanity within its societal context, and considers the private and public institutions, the people, and the methods deployed to confront it.
Scull, Andrew, ed. Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era. London: Athlone, 1981.
Scull’s critical overview introduces a valuable collection of articles related to England. Topics include therapeutic developments, the influence of phrenology, the operation of an early county lunatic asylum, and the controversy surrounding alleged “wrongful confinement.”
Scull, Andrew. Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective. London: Routledge, 1989.
A collection of critical essays on subjects that include the domestication of insanity, “moral treatment,” asylum architecture, the changing roles of medical men, and the incidence of mental disorder.
Scull, Andrew. The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
This extended revision of Museums of Madness (Scull 1979, cited under Institutional Studies) scopes the rise, growth, and eventual over-expansion of the British lunatic asylum system, highlighting the dynamics of “reform,” the professionalization of psychological medicine, and the widening parameters of mental disorder.
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- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
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- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
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- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
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- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
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- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
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- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
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- Soldiers
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- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
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- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
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- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets