Two registers of madness in Enlightenment Britain. Part 1

Abstract

Part 1 of this essay argues that in Augustan and Georgian England it was widely understood that madness could have two more-or-less distinct meanings. 'Moral' madness was the subject's own fault, and he/she remained accountable for actions commissioned under its effects. The delusional ideas arose in the mind, and by definition remained within the moral province of the individual. By contrast, in 'real' madness, the sufferer was the passive recipient of body- based sickness, and he/she was understood to be innocent, but paid for this exculpation of moral accountability by surrendering full personhood. Part 2 of the essay examines how Georgian churchmen viewed madness, and then returns to psychiatry proper for a closer look at how certain theories of madness were inflected by the problematics of insanity's conflicting meanings. Finally, a previously unrecognized Georgian psychiatric therapy, 'classical moral treatment', is described and put in the context of the better-known Tukean 'moral treatment'.