Dichotomy Between Madness And Madness

The dichotomy between madness and sanity has been one that is ever changing through history. John Haslam’s 1810 Illustrations of Madness defined madness as “being the opposite to reason and good sense, as light is to darkness, straight to crooked”. This assertion portrays madness as the binary opposite of sanity. Thus the two are seen as existing in static opposition. I will reflect on how Conceptions of madness in the Middle were a mixture of the divine, diabolical, magical and transcendental. This essay seeks to show how the line between sanity and madness is drawn using aspects of natural philosophy, supernaturalism and religious influence during the later Middle Ages.

The natural philosophical concept of humors identified not only physical

The Christian divinity described insanity as a side effect of the conflict between the Holy Spirit and the devil for control of the soul of the afflicted. The spread of madness was often associated with evil and the devil. This led to the mad being considered to be possessed and those who were considered adversaries of religion to be insane. Paracelsus who wrote in the early sixteenth century listing five kinds of permanently insane people: among whom the fifth is the Obsessi "who are obsessed by the devil". The other five mental disorders mentioned by Paracelsus had "natural" causes such as the Lunatici who were disturbed by the moon and the Vesani who were poisoned or contaminated by food or drink7. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, demonic possession had come to be seen as an increasingly important factor in insanity although it was never considered to be the sole cause of mental disturbance .Kramer and Sprenger, authors of the infamous Malleus Malificarum claimed that witches "have six ways of injuring humanity ... The sixth [is] to deprive them of reason"9,though even they conceded that mental illness had other "natural" causes. Thus both possession and insanity remained viable explanations for abnormal behaviors and the latter tended to disappear only during the most intense witch scares. . Many women who had mental

The rise of the scientific method and psychiatry has led to a more practical and rational approach to mental illness. The mentally ill are no longer considered to be those who are afflicted by demons or being punished by a higher power. Treatments include medication and psychoanalytic approaches instead of seclusion, exorcisms and torture. However, there are instances where the mad are identified from the sane through superstitious and religious elements like being possessed. This is evident in the occasional cases, in which individuals who display symptoms of schizophrenia and other Contemporary psychiatric conditions are believed to be possessed. Furthermore, the prevalence of this thought in rural societies also shows how many mentally ill are classified as being such not through science, but religious thought. The prevalence of kadims (spiritual healers) to treat the mentally ill as compared to psychiatrists shows how religion still strongly influences the distinguishing of mentally ill and the sane. This is however not unique to rural parts of Asia. A suburban couple recently made the news when the wife forced her husband to go through a exorcism when he exhibited signs of