The phenomenon of false allegations of mental illness is as old as
our first interactions as human beings. Every one of us has
described some other person as crazy or insane, and most all of us
have had periods, moments at least, of madness. But it took the
confluence of the law and medical science, mad-doctors, alienists,
priests and barristers, to raise the matter to a level of
"science," capable of being used by conniving relatives, "designing
families" and scheming neighbors to destroy people who found
themselves in the way, people whose removal could provide their
survivors with money or property or other less frivolous benefits.
"Girl Interrupted" in only a recent example. And reversing this
sort of diagnosis and incarceration became increasingly more
difficult, as even the most temperate attempt to leave these
"homes" or "hospitals" was deemed "crazy." Kept in a madhouse, one
became a little mad, as Jack Nicholson and Ken Kesey explain in
"One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. "
In this sadly terrifying, emotionally moving, and occasionally
hilarious book, twelve cases of contested lunacy are offered as
examples of the shifting arguments regarding what constituted
sanity and insanity. They offer unique insight into the fears of
sexuality, inherited madness, greed and fraud, until public feeling
shifted and turned against the rising alienists who would challenge
liberty and freedom of people who were perhaps simply "difficult,"
but were turned into victims of this unscrupulous trade.
This fascinating book is filled with stories almost impossible to
believe but wildly engaging, a book one will not soon forget.
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