Much more structured than Part 1, this episode takes a largely historical view of the social definition and treatment of the psychotic.
In England, as late as the 1600s, the mentally ill were either taken care of within the household or consigned to the desolate heath, where the mad King Lear shouts defiantly into the storm, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!"
It's not easy to care for a psychotic at home unless there are a lot of people around to tend them when necessary. And in the Middle Ages there were lots of children. Almost half died from childhood diseases but the survivors had time to look after the disabled. At the beginning of the 1800s the mad were increasingly stored away in large drab buildings which one psychiatrist aptly called "warehouses."
Our host, Jonathan Miller of the sonorous voice, doesn't mention it because he's a doctor not a sociologist but it was during this period that many farming families gave up the land and moved to the industrial cities for wage work. The number of children dropped because each now became an economic liability instead of free labor. The burden of caring for the disabled was shifted from primary institutions (the family) to secondary institutions (state-run asylums). It's still going on. When my grandfather was in his 70s, my brother and I took turns washing his feet, cutting his toenails, and tying his shoes. When my mother was that age, the insurance company paid a podiatrist to visit the house and perform the same tasks. My grandfather had five children; my mother, two.
There isn't space enough to lay out the narrative in any details. Miller, who wrote and directed it, is a very bright and talented guy and is clearly emotionally involved in the sufferings of the insane and the disenfranchised. The doctors, unable in any sense to "cure" the psychotic, frantically tried all sorts of experiments, most of which carried unpleasant side effects with them.
One of the more drastic was the lobotomy, in which the frontal cortex was isolated from the rest of the brain. What was left afterward was a kind of stub of the patient's original personality. Miller again doesn't mention it but the foremost proponent of lobotomies, the Portuguese neurologist, Egas Moniz, believed that patients with obsessive behaviour were suffering from fixed circuits in the brain. He won a Nobel for his work in 1949.
The most extreme form of treatment appeared during the eugenics movement in the early 20th century. With the acceptance of Darwin, heredity came to play a greater role, not just in understanding madness but in treating it. In the US, Chief Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes sentenced a retarded woman to sterilization, with the comment, "Twelve generations of idiots is enough." In Nazi Germany the impact was profound.
In England, as late as the 1600s, the mentally ill were either taken care of within the household or consigned to the desolate heath, where the mad King Lear shouts defiantly into the storm, "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!"
It's not easy to care for a psychotic at home unless there are a lot of people around to tend them when necessary. And in the Middle Ages there were lots of children. Almost half died from childhood diseases but the survivors had time to look after the disabled. At the beginning of the 1800s the mad were increasingly stored away in large drab buildings which one psychiatrist aptly called "warehouses."
Our host, Jonathan Miller of the sonorous voice, doesn't mention it because he's a doctor not a sociologist but it was during this period that many farming families gave up the land and moved to the industrial cities for wage work. The number of children dropped because each now became an economic liability instead of free labor. The burden of caring for the disabled was shifted from primary institutions (the family) to secondary institutions (state-run asylums). It's still going on. When my grandfather was in his 70s, my brother and I took turns washing his feet, cutting his toenails, and tying his shoes. When my mother was that age, the insurance company paid a podiatrist to visit the house and perform the same tasks. My grandfather had five children; my mother, two.
There isn't space enough to lay out the narrative in any details. Miller, who wrote and directed it, is a very bright and talented guy and is clearly emotionally involved in the sufferings of the insane and the disenfranchised. The doctors, unable in any sense to "cure" the psychotic, frantically tried all sorts of experiments, most of which carried unpleasant side effects with them.
One of the more drastic was the lobotomy, in which the frontal cortex was isolated from the rest of the brain. What was left afterward was a kind of stub of the patient's original personality. Miller again doesn't mention it but the foremost proponent of lobotomies, the Portuguese neurologist, Egas Moniz, believed that patients with obsessive behaviour were suffering from fixed circuits in the brain. He won a Nobel for his work in 1949.
The most extreme form of treatment appeared during the eugenics movement in the early 20th century. With the acceptance of Darwin, heredity came to play a greater role, not just in understanding madness but in treating it. In the US, Chief Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes sentenced a retarded woman to sterilization, with the comment, "Twelve generations of idiots is enough." In Nazi Germany the impact was profound.
