Seeing the Insane

<p><i>Seeing the Insane</i> is a richly detailed cultural history of madness and art in the Western world showing how the portrayal of stereotypes has both reflected and shaped the perception and treatment of the mentally disturbed. Covering the Middle Ages through the end of the nineteenth century Sander L. Gilman explores the depictions of mental illness as seen in manuscripts sculptures lithographs and photography. With artistic renderings and medical illustrations side-by-side this volume includes over 250 visual displays of the mentally ill. These images capture society's reliance on visual motifs to assign concrete qualities to abstract ailments in an attempt to understand the marginalized. Gilman's collection of images demonstrates how society has relegated the mentally ill to a state of otherness and portrays how society's perceived realities concerning the insane have morphed and evolved over centuries.</p> <p><b>Sander L. Gilman PhD</b> is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A respected educator he has served as Old Dominion Visiting Professor of English at Princeton; Northrop Frye Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto; Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at Tulane University; Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University; and Professor of the History of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. He has written and edited several books including <i>The Face of Madness</i> and <i>Sexuality: An Illustrated History</i>.</p><p><i>Seeing the Insane</i> is a visual history of the stereotypes that have shaped the perception of the mentally ill from medieval through modern times. The result is nearly as heartbreaking as a visual history of the Holocaust. In picture after picture the book portrays centuries of intolerance for deviance mindless cruelty unthinking prejudice and self-righteous abuse of the weak and ill.</p><p>-<i>American Journal of Psychiatry</i></p><p>As extraordinary in concept as it is in its execution. . . . This remarkable book helps laymen as well as specialists to see the insane but it does far more. When we study the past we understand the present. When we see the conventional stereotype images of insanity we find they still color our concepts of madness. Through these pictures of the insane we see all humanity. We look not through a glass darkly but through a multiplicity of media brightly.</p><p>-<i>Antiquarian Bookman</i></p><p>Readers interested in related titles from Sander L. Gilman will also want to see: Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography (ISBN: 1626549230) Sexuality: An Illustrated History (ISBN: 1626549222).</p>