Madness: A Very Short Introduction

Madness: A Very Short Introduction examines the social, cultural, medical, and artistic responses to mental disturbance across more than two millennia, Madness is something that frightens and fascinates us all. It is a word with which we are universally familiar, and a condition that haunts the human imagination. Through the centuries, it has been a theme of poetry and prose, drama and the visual arts. A whole industry has grown up, devoted to its management and suppression. Madness profoundly disturbs our common-sense assumptions; threatens the social order, both symbolically and practically; creates almost unbearable disruptions