Madness

In contemporary language, the term madness is often used synonymously with words such as mental illness and psychopathology to refer to disordered mental states and abnormal behaviors. However, while these terms designate medical and psychological conceptions of internal disorder, the concept of madness as examined in social theory is much more encompassing. Rather than attempting to explain biological or psychological causes of mental illness, social theories of madness try to understand the history of madness and the social mechanisms by which madness has been defined and regulated. From this view, it is assumed that the experience and social engagement with madness changes over time and place. In some religious traditions, madness is understood as demonic possession or divine inspiration. In other contexts, madness has been conceived as mystical experience. And in more contemporary circles, madness has been likened to biological illness, the causes of which are to be found in brain chemistry. In general, social theories of madness have examined problems such as the way that the understanding of madness has changed across societies and cultures; the way in which disciplines such as medicine, psychology, and psychiatry have shaped the meaning of madness and the treatment of the mad in the modern West; the various institutions and technologies, such as the asylum, that have been used in the confinement and treatment of the mad; and the ways in which the mad have described their experiences and challenged conventional understandings of madness.

The focus on the concept of madness also implies a critical stance toward standard definitions and treatments of mental illness. In the late 1950s and 1960s, as a medical model of psychiatry, based in biological explanations of mental illness, gained prominence, a group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists spoke out against conventional definitions of mental illness, thereby articulating an anti-psychiatry. They argued that mental illness is not a disease like tuberculosis or cancer, but rather, to use Thomas Szasz's terms, it is a problem in living that emerges out of social relationships and particular forms of social organization. In arguing against the medical models of mental illness, antipsychiatry also took a powerful stand against aggressive biological treatments of mental illness. In the 1960s, this emerged as a challenge to techniques such as lobotomy and electroshock therapy, and in the early twentyfirst century, this emerges as a challenge to the pervasive use of pharmaceuticals to treat and manage mental health. Indeed, in the most radical versions of this critique, psychiatry and its technologies are not viewed as cures and helpful treatments but rather as a violent means of social control central to the management of modern capitalist societies.