Madness and Segregative Control: The Rise of the Insane Asylum

Abstract

This paper forms part of an effort to develop an historically informed macro-sociological perspective on the inter-relationships between deviance, control structures, and the wider social systems of which they are a part. Focusing on the treatment of the mad, it seeks to provide a structural explanation of the adoption of the asylum as the primary response to the problems posed by lunatics. Both David Rothman's provocative recent work on the American “discovery of the asylum,” and standard sociological and historical accounts which picture the asylum as a response necessitated by increasing urbanization and industrialization are shown to be empirically inadequate. Instead, stress is placed on the intimate ties between the emergence of segregative control mechanisms and the growth of an ever more highly rationalized capitalist social order.