THE INSANE ASYLUM - SITE AND EXPERIENCE (Dom wariatów - miejsce i doswiadczenie)

• Authors: Kubat Katarzyna
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The purpose of this text is to depict the sort of mental hospital that emerges from widely understood medical literature - reports, scientific articles, textbooks intended for nurses and psychiatrists as well as special-occasion material. The application of an anthropological interpretation - by referring to the symbolic of the home, mental illnesses, the problem of liminality and otherness, as well as rules organising scientific cognition and treatment, including the mechanism of control, discipline and punishment - makes it possible to treat the 'insane asylum'' as a paradoxical and ambivalent space. The principle of ambivalence may be observed by considering the terrain of the hospital in different interpretations, as an example of a situation of an encounter of the intellect and mindlessness, an asylum and a prison, a refuge and a place of exile. It reflects not only the culturally determined ambiguity of madness, but also the specificity and 'inner rent' of the psychiatric discourse, in which the biological and humanistic perspective constantly confront each other; this, in turn, can affect the way of conceptualising mental disturbances, the perception of the sick and subsequent therapy.

Keywords

EN

HOME; MENTAL ILLNESSES

Discipline

• ANTHROPOLOGY: ANTHROPOLOGY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Konteksty - Polska Sztuka Ludowa
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 2-3(289-290)
• Pages: 129-138
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Kubat Katarzyna

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

11PLAAAA094125