Professional paper

Demythologising Psychiatry: A Collaborative Approach to Deconstructing Extremes in the Historical Perception of Mental Health Care in Britain and France

Alessandro Bianchi
Amberlea Jones

Abstract

Inspired by the recent historiographical attempts to demythologise the history of psychiatry, we challenge four polarising narratives that continue to haunt mental health care in the present. Michel Foucault’s seminal work Folie et Déraison (1961) marked a problematic turn to embrace binary, anti-psychiatric and celebratory constructions, which we challenge by moving from his “bird’s-eye view” of history to a micro-historical focus on the development of mythical narratives in the history of psychiatry. By taking a collaborative approach which spans two different time periods, countries and narratives, we emphasise the polarising nature of psychiatry and the need for its demythologisation today in diverse frameworks. First, we explore the French myths concerning Philippe Pinel, who allegedly founded psychiatry by unchaining “madmen” during the French Revolution, and later apparently contributed to “medicalising” the discipline with his pupil Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol. These mythical narratives reveal themselves as ploys to exalt the philanthropic and professional nature of psychiatric care. Second, we explore the impact constructions of the notion of “mental illness” had on therapeutic practices before analysing the effect of hospital scandals and popular perceptions of the asylum as a locus of abuse on British deinstitutionalisation — denoting the closure of psychiatric hospitals in the United Kingdom across the twentieth century. What emerges is that anti-psychiatric attempts to liberate madness replicated institutional hierarchies and the influence of scandals on public opinion and policy encouraged deinstitutionalisation to be mistakenly perceived as a liberating governmental movement. Ultimately, we maintain, these myths have merit and evidence exists to support them; however, we should not take them as absolute truths and mistakenly use them as a lens through which to study new evidence and research in psychiatry today.

Keywords

Demythologisation, Psychiatry, Deinstitutionalisation, Medicalisation, Abuse, Philanthropy, Liberation, France, Britain, Long Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century

Hrčak ID:

349433

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/349433

Publication date:

20.9.2025.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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