The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health

Greg Eghigian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351784382
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health explores the history and historiography of madness from the ancient and medieval worlds to the present day. Global in scope, it includes case studies from Africa, Asia, and South America as well as Europe and North America, drawing together the latest scholarship and source material in this growing field and allowing for fresh comparisons to be made across time and space.

Thematically organised and written by leading academics, chapters discuss broad topics such as the representation of madness in literature and the visual arts, the material culture of madness, the perpetual difficulty of creating a classification system for madness and mental health, madness within life histories, the increased globalisation of knowledge and treatment practices, and the persistence of spiritual and supernatural conceptualisations of experiences associated with madness. This volume also examines the challenges involved in analysing primary sources in this area and how key themes such as class, gender, and race have influenced the treatment and diagnosis of madness throughout history.

Chronologically and geographically wide-ranging, and providing a fascinating overview of the current state of the field, this is essential reading for all students of the history of madness, mental health, psychiatry, and medicine.

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Part I

MADNESS IN THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS

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1

REPRESENTATIONS OF MADMEN AND MADNESS IN JEWISH SOURCES FROM THE PRE-EXILIC TO THE ROMAN-BYZANTINE PERIOD¹

Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert

Madness is one of the topics inextricably related to an etic approach since its meaning depends on the criteria used by its observers and the definition these latter give to it. Consequently a certain consensus is established as a point of departure about what the signs of madness are, so that it becomes possible to acknowledge and examine it in distant past temporal contexts. This consensus is not as relative as one might be tempted to believe, and it focuses either on lexical labels (the use of certain words for “mad person” or “madness”) or on textual descriptions (certain behaviors are considered to be characteristic of madness). The words and behaviors usually indicate the divorce of the individual from reality in a given context, one determined by one’s alteration of cognition. The symptoms of this transformation of the self as well as its social consequences can vary; this involves a permanent to-and-fro movement between the observer and the subject of study as expressed in a historical source, a circulation giving rise to a dialectics destined to adjust the starting-point presuppositions about the topic. The historical and cultural specificity of madness lies in the interstices of this process.

The Jewish representation of madness in ancient times can be found in textual sources that are very different in nature, ranging from the discourse of legal documents to prophetic oracles and philosophical reflections.

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Madness in the Hebrew Bible

Let us start by considering the lexical aspect. The word for “mad person” in Biblical Hebrew as well as in Modern Hebrew is mešugga’ and the one for “madness” is šigga’on. We should first take into consideration the fact that the Hebrew of the Mishna and the Talmud uses a different type of vocabulary (see below). BDB², KBL³ and HAL⁴ translate the root šg’ by “madness/mad person”, depending on the use of the nominal or verbal forms. In BDB, pu’al means “mad”, hitpa’el “show madness”, and the noun, šigga’on “madness” (or be‑šigga’on “madly”). Koehler-Baumgartner keeps the same translation in English and gives two German equivalents: rasend/Raserei, Verrücktheit. As far as etymology is concerned, HAL posits the improbability of the hypothesis that shafel is a derivation of g’h. On the contrary, one could find correspondents in three other Semitic languages. Thus, in Akkadian, šegu means “to be mad, to be like a bear with a sore head”; in Arabic, šaga’a signifies “to squeal like a pig”; in Ethiopian, zange’a means “to be mad” (HAL).

The lexical approach should be completed by a narratological one which could pave the way for a historical perspective. This approach I propose does not pertain to psychiatric history but to cultural anthropology. I do not mean to establish a modern psychiatric diagnosis, but I will first and foremost try to identify the elements of that model of intelligibility the fool rebels against. This does not mean we should discredit the psychiatric model, and of course we should a priori admit the epidemiological reality of certain mental diseases. Nevertheless, I believe that modern transpositions should be treated with caution, especially because of the lack of information we have about them. The Bible is not a medical treatise; it cannot be compared, from this point of view, with Hippocratic treatises or Akkadian medical texts. We don’t have at our disposal a term allowing a systematic medical reflection, as the concept of “symptom” is in the case of medical texts. The Bible offers us a number of descriptions, favoring the narrative genre. “Madness” therefore appears in the Bible in the gist of various situations, events, characters and their discourse. The key for perusing these texts resides in the construction of their plot through the hypotheses and endings of various narrative situations, through repetitions and the choice of vocabulary. We may consider, with Victor Turner,⁵ that not only stories but also the social processes own a narrative structure or a proto-narrative one: transgression of the status quo, crisis, and reparation. Thus, the root šg’ stands for the point of departure for the present study, a focal point around which other terms and notions in close connection to it can be gradually amassed. This is the case, for instance, with expressions like timhon levav, with roots like hll or with phenomena such as “blindness.” Since the lexical field of madness cannot be defined with complete accuracy, especially with regard to the concept of “stupidity,” I have chosen a number of texts that allow us to partially grasp the specificity of madness in early Judaism.

We can distinguish among three categories: royal madness (Saul, David, Jehu); prophetic madness (Hosea, Jeremiah, etc.) and a special category that we could call “Deuteronomic” madness, after the name of the book from the Bible to which it corresponds.⁶ Undoubtedly, these categories are not completely separate: for instance, royal madness and prophetic madness intersect with one another several times and through this very fluctuation they denote an essential way of approaching Biblical madness. Taken together, the texts under analysis cover a long period of time: they include the pre-exilic period (1 Samuel 8–31, Hosea, 2 Kings 16, Deuteronomy 28); the dawns of exile (Jeremiah); the exilic and post-exilic (Zachariah); and the Hellenistic period (Daniel 4). The precise dates of these passages are still open to debate, and we believe that the arguments to date are inconclusive.

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Royal madness

Saul

Saul, the founder of the institution of monarchy, represents the emblematic figure for madness in the Hebrew Bible. Chapters 8–31 from the first book of Samuel recount the story of the foundation of monarchy while simultaneously drawing the portrait of a king whose decline is attributed to cognitive troubles. The very complex text aims to dismantle the all-inclusive, “totalitarian” character of his misfortune. From a literary point of view, this is expressed by the repetitive representation of Saul’s failures: each chapter of his biography highlights in its own way an anomaly, a misunderstanding, a bad judgement. The symptoms of his madness are multiple and eclectic and it is their very disruptive nature which gives rise to a sense of their global effects on Saul: madness reaches to the depth of his soul and body.

Saul enters the stage in Chapter 9, following the story of his appointment as king which continues in Chapter 10 and, in other versions, in Chapter 11 as well. The description of his rise to power is related to the description of his decline and fall. God’s prophecy and spirit (ruah) intervene both jointly and separately in these two episodes. But can Saul be called a possessed person? The relations of madness to the act of being possessed are most problematic in all cultures; since the phenomenology is usually identical, other criteria should be used in order to distinguish between madness and possession notions. Chapters 9–10 from the first book of Samuel present the germs of the story or, put differently, the origin of evil. All this makes up an etiology which, from a literary point of view, describes Saul’s failed initiation to kingship and, from an anthropological perspective, associates the origin of evil to a founding event in the sense that initiation represents the rebirth of an individual. Chapter 11 also focuses on Saul’s access to royal power. The ordeal that the hero must pass through involves the battlefield; he must pass the test of his military aptitudes and of his capacity to ensure the victory of his people (that of being a Nikephoros type of leader). Apparently nothing comes to stain Saul’s victory over Nahash the Ammonite, a success leading to his renewed appointment for a royal position. The only problematic element to be considered is represented by the spirit of God (ruah YHWH) cast over him, one which angers Saul. Just as in the case of the prophecy from the previous chapters, the ruah causing Saul’s anger has a double connotation or, better said, it has bipolar consequences: the consequences are formative in Chapter 11 but later prove to be profoundly disturbing, in Chapters 16, 18 and 19.

A turning point in Saul’s biography starts with Chapter 13. What was previously a latent, simple potentiality of his personality now becomes explicit speech and gesture. In order to describe this misfortune, the intellectual level overlaps with the institutional level. The first accusation against Saul refers to a transgression that involves a double connotation; by carrying out the act of sacrifice without waiting for Samuel’s arrival, Saul disobeys the divine commandment and becomes the subject of an implacable judgment:

Thou hast done foolishly (niskalta): thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee [. . .] But now thy kingdom shall not continue.

(1 Samuel 13,13–14)

In the next chapter Saul tries to establish a norm that proves once again to be an inappropriate act and judgment. On the eve of combat, he imposes fasting on his army ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health
• The Routledge Histories
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Introduction to the History of Madness and Mental Health
• Part I Madness in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds
• Part II Professions, Institutions, and Tools
• Part III Beyond Medicine
• Part IV Global Dimensions, Colonial, and Post-Colonial Settings
• Part V Perspectives and Experiences
• Part VI Maladies, Disorders, and Treatments
• Index