Madness and Democracy

The Modern Psychiatric Universe

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by Marcel Gauchet and Gladys Swain,

Translated by Catherine Porter,

Foreword by Jerrold Seigel

Princeton University Press

Due/Published June 1999, 360 pages, cloth

ISBN 0691033722

This look at the treatment of the mentally ill in nineteenth century France argues that the insane asylum became a laboratory of democracy. Political thinkers reasoned that if government was the rest in the hands of individuals, then measures should be taken to understand the deepest reaches of the self, including the state of madness. The authors' analysis of why this utopian vision of curing the insane failed constitutes a powerful argument for liberalism and a challenge to Foucault's indictment of liberal institutions.

Madness and Democracy combines details of nineteenth-century asylum life with reflections on the role of subjectivity and difference within modernism. It also shows that the lessons learned from the failure of the asylum led to the rise of psychoanalysis, a project focused on individual care and on the cooperation between psychiatrist and patient. By linking the rise of liberalism to a chapter in the history of psychiatry Gauchet and Swain offer a reassessment of political modernity.

Series: New French Thought

Review

When it comes to issues of madness and modernity, Michel Foucault’s work has dominated the discussion almost since it was first written over thirty years ago. However, his view of the modern mental asylum as a site of domination as well as a symbol of the totalitarian nature of liberal democracy is countered in this superb new history from Gauchet and Swain. Examining the efforts of insane asylums in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the authors view the institution in light of democracy and the belief in being able to transform man through human agency and institutions. The insane asylum was not a means of social control but rather a utopian attempt to cure people by saving what remained of their and bringing them back into the rest of society. Moreover, the asylum represents one of the earliest attempts to create a scientifically-based enviornment to shape the minds of people. In examining the failure of this optimistic view of the asylum, Gauchet and Swain provide an excellent critique of liberal democracy and subjectivity that shares more with Tocqueville than Foucault. Though they counter many of Foucault’s arguements, the authors share his philosophical treatment of issues such as the subject, modernity, and political theory.