Writing mad lives in the age of the asylum

• Verfasst von: Rembis, Michael A. [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Writing mad lives in the age of the asylum
• Verf.angabe: Michael Rembis
• Verlagsort: New York, NY
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: 1 online resource
• Illustrationen: illustrations.
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Oxford scholarship online
• Fussnoten: Includes bibliographical references and index. - Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on October 17, 2024)
• ISBN: 978-0-19-760486-1
• DOI: doi:10.1093/9780197604861.001.0001
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Druck-Ausgabe
• Sach-SW: Health and Wellbeing
• Sach-SW: Social services & welfare, criminology
• K10plus-PPN: 1909913308
• K10plus-PPN:
  Universitätsbibliothek
• Lokale URL UB: Zum Volltext

Abstract

'Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum' describes a history of madness and the asylum by focusing on the inmates who published pamphlets, memorials, memoirs, and newspaper and magazine articles about their experiences. Michael Rembis draws from these sources, as well as their letters, public speeches, and testimonies before state legislatures and the US Congress to demonstrate how the stories they told influenced popular, legal, and medical conceptualizations of madness and the asylum at a time when most Americans seemed to be groping toward a more modern understanding of the many different forms of 'insanity.'

Abstract

Using the writing of former asylum inmates, as well as other sources, Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum reveals a history of madness and the asylum that has remained hidden by a focus on doctors, diagnoses, and other interventions into mad people's lives. Although those details are present in this story, its focus is the hundreds of inmates who spoke out or published pamphlets, memorials, memoirs, and articles about their experiences. They recalled physical beatings and prolonged restraint and isolation. They described what it felt like to be gawked at like animals by visitors and the hardships they faced re-entering the community. They also spoke about the friendships forged among asylum inmates, many of which persisted after mad people left the asylum. Many inmates argued that asylums were more akin to prisons than medical facilities and testified before state legislatures and the US Congress, lobbying for reforms to what became popularly known as "lunacy laws." Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum exposes the centrality of changing and conflicting relations of care in producing wider ideological and systemic shifts in the history of madness - a process in which the individual and collective efforts of ordinary people shaped structures and cultures much larger than themselves"- Provided by publisher