History of Psychiatry: Readings part 1

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*** does Scull explain the introduction and purpose of 'moral treatment' for the insane? 

How, if at all, does the more recent trend of placing the growth of mental asylums in the context of the 19th cent Poor Law change understandings of the goals of 'moral treatment'?

Andrew Scull: Social order/mental disorder:anglo-american psychiatry in historical perspective

"moral treatment actively sought to transform the lunatic, to remodel  him into something approximating the bourgeois ideal of the rational individual"

Scull was a sociologist and had a marxist approach to the the issue had hand. He saw moral treatment as a break in the history of Western responses to madness. The essay that he wrote tackeled the questions of : How are we to make sense of traditional approaches to the mad,and in what do these consist? What are we to make of Moral treatment? and how can we grasp it's broader social roots and significance?

Moral treatment and its development:

Tuke and moral treatment- Pinel's decision to strike the chains from the raving maniacs in the Bicetre and William Tuke's endeavor to provide humane care for the insane at the York retreat. 

  • "creating a habit of self-restraint"  and this could be achevied better by management of hope and praise than coercion. 

The traditional approach to madness was to deal with the insane by using cruel tactics to keep them under subjecation, yet this did little to cure them. Many of the keepers who looked after the insane saw that the most effective way to make sure that the patients were orderly was to keep…

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