I viaggiatori folli

Page-Barbour Lectures

by Ian Hacking

Ian Hacking affronta in questo libro lo studio della comparsa e del faticoso riconoscimento di sindromi psichiatriche difficili da definire, e l'esplorazione degli elementi contestuali, socio-culturali e politici, che ne accompagnano il lento emergere, in un percorso che coniuga abilmente storia della psichiatria e riflessione metodologica.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Mental Illness, Anthropology, Psychiatry

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Ian Hacking is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, specialised in the History of Science.

Wikipedia entry

Reviews

[Durakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really expected to love this book, but I found myself disliking Ian Hacking's tone throughout. I enjoy a bit of wry, ironic distance, but his attitude veers on insensitive all too often. Despite his presentation of his materials concerning transient mental illnesses being odd and interesting, these labels described real people with real lives, who were affected in real ways by these labels.

Hacking strikes me as one who, like so many other academics, can craft a witty phrase or strike an amusing pose because they themselves have never been in the situation they describe. I'm not accusing him of a lack of empathy, for this comes out from time to time, but of feigning to be a floating, removed subject from his material. There was a persistent lack of situatedness made worse by his sentences that seemed to uniformly say "isn't that curious?" He reminds me in this way of a museum tour guide giddily recounting medieval torture scenes. There's something off about it. For someone who speaks so positively about "pragmatism", and "what concepts do", he writes like he hasn't had many personal, active experiences with his material outside of the library, and I find that to be off-putting.

[Anneliese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concept, but felt like the story got lost in all the details/facts he cites. Found intro & first chapter most compelling. Also like his tone, kind of familiar and wry.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is as madly tangential and confusing as the travellers themselves. Someone check the author in for an assessment.

[Burcu]

Highly interesting topic but the writing is structurally too distracted for me. Maybe it's because they are lectures.

[danielle tseng · Rating 3 out of 5]

up for debate whether i actually read this (skimming would even be generous), but it was alright. i am about to scour the notes & bibliography so that counts for something, right?

[Jennifer Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t even finish this book. I really expected to love it, and purposely searched used book sellers to find a copy for purchase. However, now I can absolutely appreciate why it is out of print.

I found it poorly organized and not suitable as a book. The author organized the book through 4 “lectures”, 3 “supplements,” and 6 “documents.” The “lectures” certainly would have been fascinating oral presentations, but did not work well in print form - which was frustrating. I also found the author to be talking about people and situations not clearly described and of which I therefore had a poor understanding, unless I jumped back and forth throughout the “lectures” and “documents.”

I read about 100 pages before I gave up, as this work was disappointing. It could have easily been made an excellent book.

[Lynn Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderful mind, quirky diction, lots of necessary redundancy, but a significant package of autonomous thinking, well worth a staccato perusal

[Veronica Rourke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating account of dissociative fugue

[Derek Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most entertaining books I've had the pleasure of reading on this sort of subject. The essential thesis is to suggest, by no means for the first time, that a particular diagnosis of a perceived pattern of behaviour, is always culturally and historically specific. It is very apt to be reminded of this when looking at a detailed case study from many decades ago because this proliferation of mental illness, quote unquote, has seemingly never been as intense as it is in these days of DM5. But it is not a novel set of circumstances.

As professions fragment and specialise they find new problems to investigate, and finer grained distinctions emerge within these. Hacking draws a telling analogy between the notion of an ecological niche, where an organism can thrive, and a time and a place where an illness can become knowable, researchable, to some extent real.

Thoroughly recommended.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was on my to-read list for years, and did not disappoint. Hacking has great gifts of clarity.

[Alexander Weber · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a 4/5 book here somewhere...but felt a little bloated even though it's only 200 pages

[Erik Wirfs-Brock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting little book on a curious episode in medical history, the 'discovery', epidemic status, and quick dying out of uncontrollable traveling as a distinct mental illness. Hacking gives a brief rundown of the cultural context of where the illness was first discovered, lots of first person material about the sad case of Albert the first patient, a brief sketch of the state of French psychiatry at the end of the 19th century, and some theories about why this illness both gained and lost its place as a recognized disease. More detailed than a magazine article, but more straightforward than a lot of similar academic literature (I'm looking at you Foucault!), I think this would be of interest to anyone interested in the history of science, and it is just another example of how infinitely strange humanity is.

[Harry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shock to the way I think about minds and groups, so good! A memorable part of this book talks about being arrested for being a nihilist and then getting whipped by Cossacks =^=

Edit: still think this book is great and the idea of antisocial tendencies is something that is really staying with me

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

[Kate]

Andrew Solomon called this book remarkable