
Rethinking madness: inside the world's oldest mental asylum - pmcpinto
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/madness-worlds-oldest-mental-asylum/index.html
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astazangasta
>In having the photographs, it’s hoped we can show that they were made with
care and precision for the benefit of the patients – not necessarily to harm.

In every depiction of the lunatic asylum, and as seems clear from history,
it's obvious that the goal of interventions is improvement - of the patient,
of society by their confinement, and so on. One can desire to do good and
still perpetuate unspeakable cruelty and harm.

Shockingly, no mention of Foucault's "History of Madness", which I love and is
well worth reading if you are as interested in this subject as I. Foucault
says these institutions began primarily as a _moral_ category, and that
confinement was a way to isolate the "unreason" of the mad from society in an
age of Reason.

The modern medical tradition certainly inherits from this moral
categorization. The patient is depraved, sick, different, needs to be
"corrected".

One of the great confrontations that needs to be made in this century is with
the idea of the "normative", of the singular human that everyone must be
measured against (and somehow found wanting), a prominent tent-pole of our
modern understanding of humanity. The "normative" needs to be replaced with
the garden - humans, like all life, are a basket of diversity. We differ from
each other in our very natures; forcing us all towards an ideal, "correcting"
our sicknesses so we all become alike in thought, is the wrong model for us.

~~~
mercer
Thankfully I've been seeing progress in the professional world in this regard,
at least in regards to autism and schizophrenia.

Treatment that is more focused on 'living with' rather than on fixing,
repressing, or medicating. More emphasis on creating and finding the right
environment to function in. And in the case of autism, less focus on treating
the umbrella-term 'autism', and more focus on specific treatment for specific
issues (many of which are not unique to autism).

Perhaps this is only my experience, but I hope it reflects a larger shift in
thinking.

Sadly I notice much less of this in 'regular society'. Mental health issues
are still 'icky' to many people and beneath a thin veneer of acceptance
there's ultimate very little patience or understanding for the outliers.

> The "normative" needs to be replaced with the garden - humans, like all
> life, are a basket of diversity. We differ from each other in our very
> natures; forcing us all towards an ideal, "correcting" our sicknesses so we
> all become alike in thought, is the wrong model for us.

So true. It sometimes feels like a white lie to talk about the 'upside' of
various disabilities, but when I look at my past it's not a lie at all. I,
with my 'special condition' am liked (loved, even) often precisely _because_
I'm 'weird'. Two friends of mine suffer from schizophrenia and it's not a lie
to say that their 'condition', and the resulting worldview, hardships, and so
on are immensely valuable.

~~~
astazangasta
I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir
Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post-
structuralist, Perry is a Jungian), but both of them were firm believers that
schizophrenia was a process that could be worked through; Perry in particular
believed that it was a _healing_ process, not a destructive one, and that
successfully going through it (to the other side) involved a reconstruction of
the self that left people better-equipped to deal with their lives. I
recommend his book, "The Far Side of Madness", for this reason alone, that it
contains stories of people who recovered from schizophrenia and felt it had
somehow improved them.

