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Questions for Thursday 9-2-2021
1. Foucault states: The absence of constraint in the nineteenth-century asylum is not unreason liberated, but madness long since mastered (252). Foucault is praising Tuke’s Quaker ideals that used religious principles as humane treatment for the insane. What is your opinion of these methods that integrated moral principles (shame with transgressions as sins and the idea that each man was morally responsible to NOT disturb society) rather than physical restraints?
2. Shorter’s first chapter (22) addresses the idea of moral therapy as a “stroke of genius” that a “handful of great men” envisioned. Shorter states that it is “astonishing” that this productive and humane therapy was “later lost so completely from view in asylum life”. When and why did the US shift into asylums as “custodial care” facilities with maintenance of chronic patients consuming all the resources and energy of the staff?
Submitted by Bonnie Akkerman I pledge…