The Asylum As Utopia (Psychology Revivals) : W.A.F. Browne and the Mid-Nineteenth Century Consolidation of Psychiatry

What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be, first published in 1837, was of considerable significance in the history of lunacy reform in Britain. It contains perhaps the single most influential portrait by a medical author of the horrors of the traditional madhouse system. Its powerful and ideologically resonant description of the contrasting virtues of the reformed asylum, a hive of therapeutic activity under the benevolent but autocratic guidance and control of its medical superintendent, provided within a brief compass a strikingly attractive alternative vision of an apparently attainable utopia. Browne's book thus provided important impetus to the efforts then under way to make the provision of county asylums compulsory, and towards the institution of a national system of asylum inspection and supervision. This edition, originally published in 1991 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, contains a lengthy introductory essay by Andrew Scull. Scull discusses the social context within which What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be came to be written, examines the impact of the book on the progress of lunacy reform, and places its author's career in the larger framework of the development of Victorian psychiatry as an organised profession. Through an examination of Browne's tenure as superintendent of the Crichton Royal Asylum in Dumfries, Scull compares the theory and practice of asylum care in the moral treatment era, revealing the remorseless processes through which such philanthropic foundations degenerated into more or less well-tended cemeteries for the still-breathing – institutions almost startlingly remote from Browne's earlier visions of what they ought to be. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Original Title Page 6 Original Copyright Page 7 Table of Contents 8 Introduction 10 The education of an alienist 10 The movement for lunacy reform 18 The defence of medical prerogatives 25 Madness and civilization 33 The madhouse and the asylum: dystopia and Utopia 37 The asylum as it turned out to be 42 The elder statesman 53 Notes 55 What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be 82 Dedication 84 To the Managers of the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum 86 Preface 88 Contents 90 Lecture I. What is Insanity? 94 I. Abnold’s Table of the Srecies of Insanity. 103 II. Heinroth's Division of Insanity. 104 III. The Author’s Awiangement. 105 Section I. 105 Section II. 105 Lecture II. What are the Statistics of Insanity? 144 Lecture III. What Asylums Were. 191 Lecture IV. What Asylums Are. 227 Lecture V. What Asylums Ought to Be. 269 Index 326 W.A.F.Browne's book "What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be" is explored within its social context, and its impact on the progress of lunacy reform is assessed. Using Browne's tenure as Superintendent of the Crichton Royal Asylum, the author compares the theory and practice of asylum care. Edited With An Introduction By Andrew Scull. Facsimile Of Edition Originally Published: What Asylums Were, Are, And Ought To Be. Edinburgh : A. & C. Black, 1837. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.