This text is a classic of French post-structuralist scholarship and is widely recommended on humanities courses across a variety of disciplines. Foucault's analysis of psychology is a devastating critique of the common understanding of insanity.

It is true that little is known about the mind and for that matter the mind in the state of derangement. This book does not unlock the secrets of either but it does give the reader a look into the different states and perhaps possible causes that lead to insanity. The author provides a collaboration of letters taken from history that describes the point of view of the patient and their families as well as the physicians who dealt with the patients.

From Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Kojak, and Melrose Place, from books, music, cartoons, advertising, and newspapers, we all derive our images of mental illness. These omnipresent media portrayals are at the least insensitive, inaccurate, and unfavorable and at the worst stigmatizing and pernicious. In this important book, Dr. Otto Wahl examines the prevalence, nature, and impact of such depictions, using numerous examples from film, television, and print media. He documents the remarkable frequency of these images and demonstrates how the media has stereotyped the mentally ill through exaggeration, misunderstanding, ridicule, and disrespect. Media Madness also shows the damaging consequences of such stereotypes - stigma, rejection, loss of self-esteem, reluctance to seek, accept, or reveal psychiatric treatment, discrimination, and restriction of opportunity. The forces that shape current images of mental illness are clarified, as are the efforts of organizations and individuals to combat such exploitation.

Today the use of photography (and its extension, video) in psychiatry is a common practice. But in the 1850s, when pioneering medical photographer and psychiatrist Dr. Hugh W. Diamond was behind the camera, this technique was an innovative application of art to science, reflecting and expanding the contemporary interest in physiognomic characteristics. In "The Face of Madness," notable scholar Sander Gilman has curated a unique exhibition of 54 of Dr. Diamond's photographs and commentary. Diamond's photographs are eloquent portraits of the insane-the melancholy, the depressed, the deranged, the alcoholic-whom he cared for at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum. In addition to their psychiatric significance, these photographs are notable works of art since Diamond was a pioneer in experimenting with and refining photographic techniques. Diamond's paper "On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomena of Insanity," is included in this printing. This discourse discloses three functions of photography which are still relevant to the practice of psychiatry today: Photography can record the appearance of the mentally ill for study; it can be used for treatment through the presentation of an accurate self-image; and it can record the visages of patients to facilitate identification in case of later readmission. In addition to Diamond's paper, notes and analysis by Dr. John Conolly are also included in this volume. Dr. Conolly, one of Dr. Diamond's associates, was widely considered to be the leading British psychiatrist of the mid-nineteenth century. His patient case studies accompany 17 of Diamond's photographs. These reports include clinical information as well as diagnoses based on the theories of the physiognomy of insanity accepted at that period. "The Face of Madness" is a book to be treasured not only by psychiatrists, but also by photographers and medical historians. As Eric T. Carlson writes in the Introduction: "Until now these photographs have been known only through the sketches made from them. Professor Gilman has performed a great service in locating them and by giving us their history." Sander L. Gilman, PhD, is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A respected educator, he has served as Old Dominion Visiting Professor of English at Princeton; Northrop Frye Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto; Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities at Tulane University; Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University; and Professor of the History of Psychiatry at Cornell Medical College. He has written and edited several books including "Sexuality: An Illustrated History" and "Seeing the Insane."

Seeing the Insane is a richly detailed cultural history of madness and art in the Western world, showing how the portrayal of stereotypes has both reflected and shaped the perception and treatment of the mentally disturbed.

John Haslam’s Illustrations of Madness, written in 1810, occupies a special place in psychiatric history, it was the first book-length account of one single psychiatric case written by a British psychiatrist. John Haslam, apothecary to London’s Bethlem Hospital, and a leading psychiatrist of the early-nineteenth century, details the case of James Tilly Matthews, who had been a patient in the hospital for some ten years. Matthews claimed he was sane, as did his friends and certain doctors. Haslam, on behalf of the Bethlem authorities, contended he was insane, and attempted to demonstrate this by presenting a detailed account of Matthew’s own delusional system, as far as possible in Matthew’s own words. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, Roy Porter’s Introduction to this facsimile reprint of an historic book goes beyond Haslam’s text to reveal the extraordinary psychiatric politics surrounding Matthew’s confinement and the court case it produced, leading up to Haslam’s dismissal from his post. Still relevant today, Haslam’s account can be used as material upon which to base a modern diagnosis of Matthew’s disorder.