In the early 1820s, in the gloomy aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the French Romantic painter Theodore Gericault (1791-1824) made five portraits of patients in an asylum or clinic. No depictions of madness before or since can compare with them for humanity, straightforwardness and immediacy. The portraits challenge us to find responses in ourselves to the face and the embodied mysteries of the other person, and to our own internal (unsconscious, disavowed) otherness: in this sense, Gericault was a "painter-analyst". The challenge could not be more urgent, in our world of suspicion of the stranger, and of the medicalisation of madness. The book sketches the history of this last process, from the Enlightenment through to the Revolution and its public health policies, to the birth of the asylum in its interface with the penal system. But there was also a new medico-philosophical conviction that the mad were never wholly mad, and their suffering and disturbance might best be addressed through relationship and speech.

No one is more conscious of the faults of this work than the author. Therefore some self -criticism should be woven into this foreward. There are two possible methodologically pure solutions to this book's theme: a de scriptive catalog of the pictures couched in the language of natural science and accom panied by a clinical and psychopathological description of the patients, or a completely metaphysically based investigation of the process of pictorial composition. According to the latter, these unusual works, explained psychologically, and the exceptional circum stances on which they are based would be integrated as a playful variation of human expression into a total picture of the ego under the concept of an inborn creative urge, behind which we would then only have to discover a universal need for expression as an instinctive foundation. In brief, such an investigation would remain in the realm of phenomenologically observed existential forms, completely independent of psychiatry and aesthetics. The compromise between these two pure solutions must necessarily be piecework and must constantly defend itself against the dangers of fragmentation. We are in danger of being satisfied with pure description, the novelistic expansion of details and questions of principle; pitfalls would be very easy to avoid if we had the use of a clearly outlined method. But the problems of a new, or at least never seriously worked, field defy the methodology of every established subject.

The first comprehensive encyclopedia of world photograph up to the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets out to be the standard, definitive reference work on the subject for years to come.

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.

Lemony Snicket meets Oscar Wilde meets Edgar Allan Poe in this exciting and scary middle-grade novel inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray -- a family curse is unleashed! Bryony Gray is becoming famous as a painter in London art circles. But life isn't so grand. Her uncle keeps her locked in the attic, forcing her to paint for his rich clients . . . and now her paintings are taking on a life of their own, and customers are going missing under mysterious circumstances. When her newest painting escapes the canvas and rampages through the streets of London, Bryony digs into her family history, discovering some rather scandalous secrets her uncle has been keeping, including a deadly curse she's inherited from her missing father. Bryony has accidentally unleashed the Gray family curse, and it's spreading fast. With a little help from the strange-but-beautiful girl next door and her paranoid brother, Bryony sets out to break the curse, dodging bloodthirsty paintings, angry mobs and her wicked uncle along the way.

A collection of stories, vignettes, sketches, and parables.

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."

Jennifer Tucker studies the intersecting trajectories of photography and modern science in late Victorian Britain.