ENGL 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Etiology
Document Summary
Mechanics of porter"s writing: opens with shakespeare. Beginning his history with an acknowledgment that madness is connected to culture. Literature is the touchstone to madness: confronts head on that the subject of the course is contingent. Some believe that there is no mental illness: points out the challenges and criticisms of psychiatry. Madness is man-made: understood as a myth. The language of madness was used as a tool of oppression: a cultural force that goes beyond medical, ways to deal with things that are harder to explain. It is rather a myth, fabricated by psychiatrists for reasons of professional advancement and endorsed by society because it sanctions easy solutions for problem people page 2: this is a viable position, combative language. The metrics used to declare sanity and insanity don"t always work out: points out that the history of madness is elliptical and not teleological. Three key things of madness: etiology.
