During the 17th and 18th centuries, humanity began to discover and explore the connections and differences between mind and body, body and soul, body and the world around it . It was during this period that “psychology was more neurological than it had ever been at any time” and the mind and body separated; a psychological problem of the mind was not always directly related to a physiological aspect of the body (Rousseau 112). One such exploration was that of madness and madness. Originally thought to be the result of an imbalance of the four humors within the body, advances in science have led to the discovery of a disconnect between an insane person's mind and his body. What was in the brain that caused an individual to lose their sense of reality? This essay aims to explore various primary medical texts that explore illness with respect to Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, and whether the fascination with madness in that period was actually scientific or, as it suggests Foucault, cultural.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Writers, whether medical, creative, or philosophical, were looking for a means to understand madness and where it comes from, what it causes, how to cure it, and anything else they could discover. Curiosity was nothing new to them, but advanced studies of the body and brain were. There were enough prior discoveries to make them aware of a separation, but not enough to establish what that separation was. This awareness was what gave impetus to their studies and explorations. There was an unprecedented fusion of literature and science. Medical discoveries influenced the works of literary authors and the directions in which they took their stories, while literary writings influenced the directions in which scientists took their discoveries. Some saw the disease as a mysterious and almost romantic condition, a source of creativity and the result of intense passions, feelings and anger. Others saw it as a debilitating, reprehensible condition and the result of inactivity, laziness and a weak, unhealthy mind. Foucault opens with the idea that madness was simply replacing a social divide created by the disappearance of leprosy, the previously excluded group. Society maintains a need for exclusivity, which is achieved by removing unwanted members, thus leading to the introduction of workhouses and asylums as new means of removal. He suggests that “since the mid-seventeenth century, madness is linked to this country of confinement and to the act that designates confinement as its natural home” (Foucault 39). The madness was just beginning to be understood. Misunderstanding incites fear, as has always happened and always will happen within a society. With the new knowledge that madness was linked only to the mind, but not knowing what that link was, people needed to learn its causes and cures before allowing it to spread dangerously. The desire for knowledge goes far beyond simple curiosity, into the realm of self-understanding and protection. If people can understand the causes that lead a person to go crazy, they will try to defend themselves from falling into such an illness. However, not only the mad were sent away, but also the criminals and the poor. The confinement of all these groups together, under the impression of individuals who needed to be cured, suggests a cultural purpose, not a scientific one. At the same time, insanity, crime, and homelessness were all conditions believed to resultof the individual; people allowed themselves to fall into those categories. Categories that assigned them “a special modulation that concerned madness proper, and addressed those called, without exact semantic distinction, crazy, alienated, deranged, demented, extravagant” (Foucault 66). Some conditions were preventable depending on how you lived your life. If you remain reasonable and balanced, avoiding eccentricities and refraining from too strong a desire for wealth and other calm-inducing endeavors, you can help prevent most conditions. If it is preventable, the individual can be held responsible. The blame lies with the person, not their situation or other lifestyle factors. In his “Observations on the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, Insanity, or Insanity,” Thomas Arnold, a physician, traces the aspects of the disease based on his own field observations. This piece, chosen for the interesting comparisons that can be made between it and Foucault's work, works to define illness, distinguish different types, and explore treatments. In his preface he makes it known that his work is neither perfect nor complete, but is simply the result of his own observations on the subject. He recognizes that “whatever their defects, they at least have the merit of being based on observation, on experience…it is not a piece of fantasy; but a real copy, however little the hand of a master may reveal, drawn with a certain care and exactness immediately from nature” (Arnold ii). His language suggests at once a level of confidence in his own abilities and intelligence on the subject, as well as some uncertainty regarding the reception of his work in the scientific world. He subsequently displays an almost hesitant nature in releasing his remarks, suggesting doubts about his abilities or an expectation that his work will be challenged. His preface and introductory passages, themselves lengthy, reveal that Arnold feels the need to explain himself and the purposes behind the study. He acknowledges where he got his information from studies conducted before him and his reasons for incorporating it. Like many others, Arnold follows his own curiosities and explorations. The ideas are his, based on his knowledge and search for understanding. His medical experience as a doctor and interest in the profession fuel his desire for further knowledge. This attitude is the same one held by many scholars of the Age of Reason. Arnold, like others, is looking for reason within an unreasonable illness. Arnold also includes an interesting piece that explores the popular question of whether madness is more prevalent "in England than in any other country," although he primarily discusses the comparison between England and France. (Arnold 15). He admits the possibility, but that “this is certain, that it is not uncommon among the French, as their medical writings abundantly testify. I am inclined, however, to admit that they have fewer” (Arnold 16). It is interesting that he acknowledges this, while Foucault acknowledges that “it is less known that more than one in a hundred inhabitants of the city of Paris found themselves confined there, in the space of several months” (Foucault 38). Arnold's knowledge is clearly limited by a lack of information, in a time when there is no technology to spread the word as quickly as today. Foucault's book, like Arnold's, seems to focus more on the madness within French and English societies. While clearly not exhaustive, this raises the question of whether the fascination was stronger within these two societies, or perhaps whether their interests in science were more extensive, or even whether their cultures were more intent on purging society of abnormal. JohnJohnstone, in his medical jurisprudence. On Madness, he begins his work by acknowledging that “The Hadfield trial has, however, affected public opinion so deeply, that it cannot be inopportune, nor useless to publish them at this time, while all are anxious, and many doubt, and some doubtless are entirely ignorant of the subject” (Johnstone i). This follows Foucault's idea that the interest in madness was cultural for the period. By stating that he publishes his works as such, and the intent for them to be read by the public, indicates that it has become a more social issue. It is not only the medical world that is showing interest in the topic as it has branched out into the interest of the general public. Clearly the topic is becoming a social issue, curiosity has extended beyond the world of science. In fear of scandal and the desire for exclusivity, interest has spread. Considering the large number of people who were confined at one time or another, it is easily conceivable that most members of society were directly affected by insanity, whether through a family member or an acquaintance. The web of madness had spread, infecting the smallest corners of the world. Its profound existence meant that everyone was aware and affected, which is why it was such a problem. Johnston attempts a humanitarian approach, disagreeing with the view "that madmen who commit great crimes should not simply be excluded from society, but like all other rabid animals, should be driven out of life" and instead that "society can obtain adequate protection by the imprisonment of maniacs, without blood” (Johnstone vi). He states that society simply needs to imprison the insane, criminals and others, as a means of protection. He defends imprisonment as a means of protection, not as a way to study or observe. It is a culture that demands the isolation of those who do not fit perfectly into it, but at the same time the interest shows that it is not a desire to be hidden. Society would like to hide criminals. hide those that cause shame and harm, but with the crazy they want to separate them but at the same time explore them There are those that society wishes to banish and never see and those that it wishes to remove, but the allure is so strong that they must be removed from sight. , where they can be observed, studied and contemplated. Foucault identifies this with “a very ancient Middle Ages custom of putting madmen on display… which allowed those on the outside to observe the madmen chained within. They thus constituted a spectacle at the gates of the city” (Foucault 68). The intent to publicly exploit the madman removes him from the realm of science and medicine since the definition of spectacle implies the purpose of entertaining. In equating the custom of the Middle Ages with the public interest of the 18th century, it is difficult to argue that the interest is anything but cultural. It is a custom that existed until 1815 and “if you believe a report presented to the House of Commons, the Bethlehem hospital exposed the insane for a penny, every Sunday” (Foucault 68). There is no scientific purpose behind such displays of so-called entertainment. The idea that madness had turned into a form of entertainment, at the expense of the dignity of its victims, shows that there was little to no respect or mercy from society. A society's interest in the less fortunate, the different, the misunderstood, makes it a purely cultural phenomenon, so although the interest began with science, it has moved far beyond that. Johnston perhaps alludes to awareness of cultural fascination in a negative way when he states "I am not willing to enlarge my treatise with those obscure, but important, questions which so often givespace for the inventions and whims of men of sense" (Johnstone vii). His term "images and whims of men" suggests that he knows that the interest has expanded beyond the scientific world and has become a source of spectacle and amusement It seems that he wants to avoid playing with these types of interests. He states that his interest is "to familiarize the scientific doctrines of madness" and although it is aimed at the public, his intent remains scientific. but such discoveries are aimed at understanding, not capricious curiosity. Understanding its origins was fundamental to the exploration of madness. Arnold identifies "some of the most powerful causes of this type of madness are: religion, love, the commerce and the various passions that accompany the desire, the search and acquisition of wealth, every kind of luxury and all violent activities". and any permanent attachments" and the most powerful, "invincible love, which has made mad in every age and nation than any other passion beside, perhaps more than all of them together” (Arnold 17, 19). Passion is what arouses madness in a man; strong emotions arouse feelings so intense that a person loses all sense of reason. Here we see the romantic affiliations with the disease. His strong affiliation with love was his attraction to artists and writers. Writers often used characters, primary or secondary, who suffered from madness or melancholy as a means to advance their narrative. There was a purpose behind the illness, it didn't exist just for the sake of existence; it was given meaning. Johnstone also cites sources of high emotions and passions as sources, that “in all states of civilization, thinking beings have been subject to derangement of the intellectual faculties; Love, the most ardent of our instincts, ambition, the most restless inciter to action and disturber of our repose, jealousy, fear, revenge and all the evil passions, which must always, in partial measure, to have produced this disease” (Johnstone 3) . In a society that requires composure, discipline, and strict adherence to social protocol, any person too overwhelmed by their emotions was considered at risk. Control over one's emotions demonstrated self-control and a healthy mind. Emotions led to instability, instability led to unreasonableness, unreasonable led to madness. Both doctors agree with Foucault's connection that “the wild danger of madness is linked to the danger of passions and their fatal concatenation” (Foucault 85). Passions are often associated with desire, a human being's desire for certain things in life. Passion is what inspires an individual's actions. Taking into account the religious influences of the period, if a person is expected to live a humble life, worshiping God above all earthly possessions of wealth, loving Him above all other people, and having ambitions deemed no greater than those of God himself, the associations between religion and madness become a little clearer. Having too high a feeling for anything other than God seems to be a major cause of madness. Even anger, strong and powerful anger, leads to madness and goes against the religious notion that one should "love thy neighbor." The vices and sins of a human being influence his mind towards madness, so the correct lifestyle keeps them sane. Even before the separation of mind and body, when passion was seen “as the meeting point of body and soul; the point at which the activity of the latter comes into contact with the passivity of the former”, passion was considered thesource of madness in a person (Foucault 86). It would “necessarily cause certain movements in the humors; anger agitates bile, sadness excites melancholy (black bile), and the movements of the humors are sometimes so violent as to upset the entire economy of the body” (Foucault 86). In previous centuries, religion overtly played a role in a person's sanity; the imbalance of humors causing such a condition was blamed on a bad relationship with God. If an individual was not close to God, this caused a lack of harmony between his humors, resulting in an abnormal condition of the mind or body. In the Age of Reason, however, religious influence is still evident, even after the differentiation between mind and body. Science had expanded, but only as far as it could, while being influenced by God. Perhaps a person's direct relationship with God is not the cause of his madness, but the departure from a lifestyle encouraged by the church is. Again, we see that blame can be placed on those who suffer; they are responsible for their condition. If passionate temperaments are the cause of madness and the best way to keep sane is to adhere to strict codes of conduct, he seems to lean towards a cultural and less scientific explanation. Science has brought about understanding, but the level of understanding remains within cultural boundaries. Eighteenth-century society limits itself and its understanding by confining it to religious standards. Is it a coincidence that ambition can lead to madness, when greed and pride are sins? Is it a coincidence that passionate love can lead to madness, when lust is a sin and "thou shalt not lust"? Is it a coincidence that anger can lead to madness, when anger is a sin and a person is expected to "love thy neighbor"? God, religion and the "faithful servant" are reason and losing sight of them leads to disillusionment with the sense of reality. God is what keeps us grounded in reality. There was also the question: where do you draw the line between madness and eccentricity? Artists, literary and visual, often found themselves struggling with periods of madness and melancholy, as they seemed to lose the ability to reason. In a civilization where imagination can easily be confused with madness, the two tended to overlap. Known to be the Age of Reason, “it is an ironic contrast that [it] produced so many cases of madness among its writers” (Rousseau 117). The distinction was that there were “two kinds of imagination; healthy and sick, normal and sick, and the distinction was increasingly discussed” (Rousseau 117). Imagination requires the ability to see outside the ordinary realm of reality; create based on the images in your mind. It works as a reflection of the inner workings of a person's mind, a way to see into their thoughts. It fueled fears and hysteria about madness in the 17th and 18th centuries. It's what influenced so many of their stories to take a turn towards madness. Does imagination drive one to madness or does imagination arise from madness? Where is the real connection? They regarded imagination as "an irrational 'super passion,' as significant to the body as gravity was to the earth, and as the totality of an infinite number of sensations associated and combined in as yet inexplicable patterns" (Rousseau 122). Essentially the difference is the ability to reunite with reality and reason; an individual suffering from the disease is unable to disconnect from the imaginary world and separate from unreasonableness. Foucault distinguishes the difference; “Imagination is not madness. Even if in the arbitrariness of hallucination alienation finds its first access to its vain freedom, madness begins only atbeyond this point, when the mind binds itself to this arbitrariness and becomes a prisoner of this apparent freedom” (Foucault 93). Imagination may be a sign, or even a gateway to madness, but it is not madness until an individual can no longer see the difference between his imagination and reality. An awareness, a rationality, a reasoning; if an individual can present a clarification between these and his imagination, then he is safe. The two are linked and although “Madness is therefore beyond imagination, yet is deeply rooted in it; since it simply consists in recognizing a spontaneous value in the image, a total and absolute truth” (Foucault 94). If an image is created in the mind, it is not necessarily and undeniably unreal; imagination goes beyond reality. It's essentially about reasoning. Reality can be created, destroyed, manipulated. An individual's reality exists exclusively in his mind. If everyone sees the world through different eyes, how can every reality be exactly the same? How can humanity distinctly define reality? Reasoning is the real breaking point. Realities may be different, but reasoning and an awareness of the world around you are the final threads of sanity. Our interpretations of the world may vary, but its existence does not. If one can still reason that "this world exists in the realm of humanity, and this world exists in my imagination," one's sanity can still be considered intact. The loss of the ability to reason between these different worlds culminates in madness. The obsession with observing and studying mental illnesses also included attempts to treat or cure insanity. Taking into consideration what was known about the origin of insanity: what conditions caused insanity, the variety of symptoms and types of insanity, how different symptoms manifested, etc., medical professionals explored many methods of treatments and cures. Every single symptom must be treated and the body and soul must be treated separately. As for the discovery of a cure as understandings change, “it is no longer determined by the meaningful unity of the disease, organized around its core qualities; but, segment by segment, it must address the different elements that make up the disease; the cure will consist of a series of partial destructions, in which psychological attack and physical intervention are juxtaposed, complement each other, but never interpenetrate” (Foucault 178). There are several elements to the disease; curing a patient's hallucinations alone while he still suffers from melancholy is not enough, a cure must take place in its entirety, a complete healing of the body and mind. In his Selected Cases in the Different Species of Insanity, Insanity, or Insanity William Perfect, also a physician, speaks of some of his patients suffering from the conditions above mentioned. Unlike the works of Arnold and Johnstone, it focuses less on definitions and terms and more on specific patients, their conditions and treatments for them. He states that his cases are “carefully collected, chosen with a view to real utility, and faithfully reported, it will easily be seen that the author has no intention of imposing any specific nostrum on the public, but simply of showing the result of his practice and his observations, in an illness of the utmost importance" (Perfetto v). Its purpose is purely to observe and document one's experience in the area, hopefully to enable further understanding of the subject. Unlike Johnstone and Arnold, he does not intend to discover any new information, formulate new theories or methods, or argue any prior knowledge in the study. His work, he hopes, will simply provide the background and materialfor future work. Are his intentions cultural or scientific? Perfect's first subject is "a gentleman, aged fifty-eight years, was, early in January 1770, placed under my care" for insanity following "a sudden transition in his circumstances, which, from easy and convenient, became doubtful and precarious” (Perfect 2). This gentleman's illness was the consequence of the loss of his lifestyle; he saw himself “ruined, lost and ruined! day” (Perfect 2). Perfect describes this man objectively, trying to be as concrete as possible, thus giving the impression of credibility as he refrains from making the writing too personal. It seems that he simply wants to document, with everything the accuracy it can allow. It provides an in-depth description, from the origin of his patient's condition, what happened for the disease to manifest itself down to very specific aspects of his symptoms, physically and mentally. As mentioned above, Foucault mentioned the importance of separating symptoms, treating them individually, to heal the entire body and mind. Because of the patient's impatient, confrontational, and easily upset nature during social situations, Perfect prohibited any interactions with his friends and family. However, apart from this, he gives no further rationale behind his treatment methods, such as “doing a seton”. between his shoulders, and confining the patient to a quiet, silent and almost completely dark room: I have never allowed it to spoke to him, neither by interrogation nor by answer, nor did I allow anyone to visit him” (Perfect 4). Confirms the results he hopes to achieve and those that are achieved, but fails to justify the purpose of the treatments chosen. His methods suggest imprisonment rather than treatment. Were his methods actually designed to cure or simply to support, so could an observation be made? Was his best interest in the patient or in his studies? Psychology was such a new and still foreign subject that doctors were given a lot of freedom over what they could and could not do. In an enlightened age that claimed to have abandoned the cruel and torturous customs of the Middle Ages, these customs, in truth, had not entirely disappeared. Is it a humanitarian approach to exhibit madmen in spectacles for the general public to observe and mock? Is it human to silence them and hide them? Sure, it was done under the impression that it would cure the sick, but who regulated the methods used? In such a foreign area of ​​study, few if any rules existed to protect the insane. Doctors were free to use whatever method seemed effective or interesting based on their real intentions. Was the patient's good really put first, or had it become a mad rush to discover the aspects of madness? Perfect further explains his treatments, including prescribing opium which made the patient calmer and less anxious, and eventually “he spoke rationally and correctly and rarely burst into frantic rhapsodies, or passionate utterances of any kind” and after four months “his reason had now returned, his imagination was strengthened, his ideas were more collected, and he spoke of things as they really were, and of the root cause of his mental infirmity” (Perfect 6). Two interesting aspects of this include the use of the word "imagination" and the patient's ability to talk about the cause of his illness. The term imagination clearly has multiple meanings, as highlighted by Rousseau's article and Foucault's book. Although Perfect does not clarify, one can rightly assume that he is referring to the healthy and normal imagination, as opposed to the diseased and diseased one. 2012.