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Mind-forg'd Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Renaissance to the Restoration
Cambridge 1987 first edition. Harvard University. Octavo hardcover. Near Fine (slightest amount of rippling in text) in Fine dj . ISBN 0-674 576179.
412 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Roy Porter
211 books123 followersRoy's books cover several fields: the history of geology, London, 18th-Century British ideas and society, medicine, madness, quackery, patients and practitioners, literature and art, on which subjects (and others) he published over 200 books are articles.
List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )
List of works can be found @ wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Porter )
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 15, 2010
One of the more enjoyable books on the early history of psychiatry that I have read, largely as Porter uses his sources well and finds interesting stories to tell. He is fairly balanced as far as debates on the nature of psychiatry go, choosing to give the doctors involved far more of the benefit of the doubt than writers like Andrew Scull or David Rothman.
July 17, 2025
Overall, a decent read.
A book well worth reading to educate yourself about the history of Madness in England and Scotland.
It starts off quite weakly with the author surveying different uses of the word "mad"- weak because he includes some semantic examples that are clearly only loosely relatyed in an analogical way (such as if you sink a hole in one and your friend says "That was mad!"); it doesn't get to the core of anything and just muddies the waters.
The rest proceeds reasonablly well and it's an easy read.
Porter has somewhat of an axe to grind insofar that he thinks that there has been a mistaken disconnection between the 19th Century and what came before. Porter thinks that the cut-off is mistaken (a la Foucault) but also misrepresents the character of early Mad houses (as opposed to the asylums of the 19th Century) in that they tended to be small-scale affairs funded by charitable sources.
His evidence is probably sufficient to at least provide a re-calibration, if not perhaps the whole-hearted re-analysis that he's hoping for. The reason for this is that he suggests early on that Foucault is speaking about Europe in general and that England and Scotland were outliers. If his analysis is useful then, it is because it suggests that there may have been significant differences between the timing and motivations across mainland Europe vs the United Kingdom. What it doesn't do, even though tonally it feels like the intention, is form a refutation of Foucault's general observations/claims.
Secondly, there are a number of times where the evidence (for example, statistical) from which he draws his conclusions seems equivocal at best. For example, the increases over the decades of the number of Mad Houses in the United Kingdom and subsequent explosion of their number in the 19th Century points, in his view, to the structured and controlled growth of aslums as institutions (in Irving Goffman's sense) as specifically tied to the 19th Century- contrasting with the more organic growth before hand; but, on the other hand, he points out that the population also exploded during 19th Century- surely then the number of Mad Houses would have been limited by the population and the kind of economics that increased demand makes possible.
A book well worth reading to educate yourself about the history of Madness in England and Scotland.
It starts off quite weakly with the author surveying different uses of the word "mad"- weak because he includes some semantic examples that are clearly only loosely relatyed in an analogical way (such as if you sink a hole in one and your friend says "That was mad!"); it doesn't get to the core of anything and just muddies the waters.
The rest proceeds reasonablly well and it's an easy read.
Porter has somewhat of an axe to grind insofar that he thinks that there has been a mistaken disconnection between the 19th Century and what came before. Porter thinks that the cut-off is mistaken (a la Foucault) but also misrepresents the character of early Mad houses (as opposed to the asylums of the 19th Century) in that they tended to be small-scale affairs funded by charitable sources.
His evidence is probably sufficient to at least provide a re-calibration, if not perhaps the whole-hearted re-analysis that he's hoping for. The reason for this is that he suggests early on that Foucault is speaking about Europe in general and that England and Scotland were outliers. If his analysis is useful then, it is because it suggests that there may have been significant differences between the timing and motivations across mainland Europe vs the United Kingdom. What it doesn't do, even though tonally it feels like the intention, is form a refutation of Foucault's general observations/claims.
Secondly, there are a number of times where the evidence (for example, statistical) from which he draws his conclusions seems equivocal at best. For example, the increases over the decades of the number of Mad Houses in the United Kingdom and subsequent explosion of their number in the 19th Century points, in his view, to the structured and controlled growth of aslums as institutions (in Irving Goffman's sense) as specifically tied to the 19th Century- contrasting with the more organic growth before hand; but, on the other hand, he points out that the population also exploded during 19th Century- surely then the number of Mad Houses would have been limited by the population and the kind of economics that increased demand makes possible.
December 19, 2020
201220
Another book every Psychiatrist In Training should read.
I bought this book in 1987 following reading a review in the Guardian, but never got round to reading it. I am appalled how much I could have used its narrative in presentations and rue the lost opportunities for bringing the wisdom of history to the next generation.
Many notable quotes ... the first on p1 "... as the young Charles Darwin was to remark, 'My Father says there is perfect gradation between sound people and insane — that everybody is insane at some time.' ... the last on p283 "The new psychiatry possessed practical techniques of control, closely linked with the asylum. But could it achieve a common postulate, an agreed theory of consciousness and of mind/body relations — in short, could it achieve scientific authority and public credence?"
This is an academic text with 80 pages of Notes and 40 pages of Bibliography that is easy to read.
CJHD
Another book every Psychiatrist In Training should read.
I bought this book in 1987 following reading a review in the Guardian, but never got round to reading it. I am appalled how much I could have used its narrative in presentations and rue the lost opportunities for bringing the wisdom of history to the next generation.
Many notable quotes ... the first on p1 "... as the young Charles Darwin was to remark, 'My Father says there is perfect gradation between sound people and insane — that everybody is insane at some time.' ... the last on p283 "The new psychiatry possessed practical techniques of control, closely linked with the asylum. But could it achieve a common postulate, an agreed theory of consciousness and of mind/body relations — in short, could it achieve scientific authority and public credence?"
This is an academic text with 80 pages of Notes and 40 pages of Bibliography that is easy to read.
CJHD
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews