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English
Description
What seems like madness in one society may be accepted as normal behavior in another, but hearing voices or hallucinating has almost universally been considered a sign of insanity. What differs from one culture to the next is the way such aberrations are dealt with, depending on whether the voices come from God, the Devil, or a brain malfunction. This program explores historical ideas of mental illness and shows how early theories based on spirit...
Language
English
Description
Originally denoting a place of refuge, the word "asylum" became associated with brutal institutions for locking up people with mental illness. As attitudes about psychosis evolved reformers began to provide more humane shelter, but these soon devolved into overcrowded, prison-like facilities that were not much better than what had come before. This program traces the history of mental institutions, noting how theories of care reflected the social...
Language
English
Description
The anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s held that identifying people as mentally ill was a convenient way to control segments of the population considered to be socially undesirable. Two centuries earlier, Enlightenment philosophers reasoned that if insanity could be traced to physiological defects, it might then be assumed that human beings are no more than somatically-driven automatons without free will. This program examines these and other notions...