This Way Madness Lies was published in partnership with London’s Wellcome
Collection for the exhibition “Bedlam: The Asylum and Beyond,” which ran from September 2016 - January 2017 and
was curated by Mike Jay and Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz. It is a book that was
meant to accompany the exhibition, yet which, by virtue of the substantial text
and reproductions, can stand alone.
The book traces the history of treatment of
the mentally ill by following the colorful story of Bethlem Royal Hospital from
its antecedents in the Middle Ages up to the present. Its sway over the public imagination
evidenced by its appearance in everything from Jacobean Drama to “Sweeney
Todd,” Bedlam has truly attained archetypal status. An archetype, yet also a real functioning
hospital. Sections of the book entitled
“Madhouse,” Lunatic Asylum,” and “Mental Hospital” chronicle the facilities
designed respectively during the 17th/18th, 19th,
and 20th centuries, and explain how they reflect changing notions of
madness in each era.
The first structure was visually grand but
lacked a foundation, a metaphor for what was going on inside: “a façade of care
concealing a black hole of neglect” (p. 39).
It became a tourist attraction along the lines of the zoo, with nothing
preventing the public from gawking at and taunting the inmates. While its replacement gave the impression of
being more functional, conditions proved equally squalid. On the other hand, 19th-century
Europe and the United States saw asylum reforms, as well as the medicalization
of madness as an “illness” and the ascent of psychiatry as a branch of
medicine. Finally, in 1930, the
buildings still in use in Monks Orchard, a suburb of London, were constructed.
By contrast, we learn about treatments
elsewhere, most notably Geel, Belgium.
There, for centuries, as an alternative to being warehoused in
psychiatric hospitals, the mentally ill have been successfully boarding with
townspeople.
