Out of his mind

<i>Out of His Mind </i>interrogates how Victorians made sense of the madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. Even at the height of enthusiasm for the curative powers of nineteenth-century psychiatry to be certified as a lunatic meant a loss of one's freedom and in many ways one's identify. Because men had the most power and authority in Victorian Britain this also meant they had the most to lose. The madman was often a marginal figure confined in private homes hospitals and asylums. Yet as a cultural phenomenon he loomed large tapping into broader social anxieties about respectability masculine self-control and fears of degeneration. Using a wealth of case notes press accounts literature medical and government reports this text provides a rich window into public understandings and personal experiences of men's insanity.