“Madness in Civilization: A History of How We Get It Wrong”
👉 For more insights, check out the full book and audio summary here 📖
📕 Transcript and audio of this episode is available here for free
Title: Madness in Civilization
Author: Andrew Scull
Category: World History, Psychology & Human Behavior, Mindfulness & Wellbeing
Did this book make you feel a little unsteady? Sam asks Sophie that right at the top, and the answer is yes — Andrew Scull's history of madness is not a story of progress, it's a story of us constantly getting it wrong.
Sam and Sophie walk through two and a half thousand years of that story: the Greek humors and the Roman furiosus stripped of his rights, the Tower of London locking up the mad for convenience, the Malleus Maleficarum linking female madness to demonic possession, the real Ship of Fools, Pinel striking the chains at Bicêtre only to replace them with invisible ones, degeneration theory and its eugenic seed, the lobotomy years of Freeman and Moniz, and the arrival of Thorazine that emptied the asylums into SRO hotels and jails. They land on Scull's most provocative claim: we haven't solved madness, we've just renamed it, and the DSM is a political and commercial document.
If you've ever wondered why mental health care looks the way it does, this episode names the pattern behind the mess. The takeaway: the moment we think we have the answer is the moment we start repeating the worst parts of this history.
Madness in Civilization by Andrew Scull. If you want the full written summary, the whole library is on 7minutebooks.com/app — over 6,000 fiction and nonfiction titles you can read or listen to in any language, with infographics on many titles. Unlimited access from $2.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 lifetime.
Chapters
00:00Two Thousand Years Of Getting It Wrong00:42Greek Humors And Roman Furiosus01:29Demons, Witches, And Ships Of Fools02:23Pinel's Invisible Chains And Asylum Collapse03:26Lobotomy, Thorazine, And Emptying The Asylums04:51Renaming Madness And The Humility Takeaway
Topics
Related episodes
