Introduction

This book deals with a number of themes in the history of insanity. It does not set out to provide a complete history of the period under review, rather it is concerned with issues which, although they may be interesting in themselves, serve to illustrate a more general problem, namely, the relationship between diagnostic categories in psychiatry and social categories. Each chapter is devoted to an exploration of this relationship. For example, notions of feminine vulnerability are shown to be related to the social circumstances which govern women’s lives. The ‘incurables’ of nineteenth-century asylums were drawn almost entirely from the destitute poor. The threat of masturbational insanity was most acute for young middle-class men for whom self-control was a vital ingredient of social and material success. Thus this book is in no sense a history of insanity, but a highly selective collection of chapters on the history of the insane.