
Intends to show that the belief in mental illness and the social actions to which it leads have the same moral implications and political consequences as had the belief in witchcraft and the social actions to which it led.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in an "outside the box" perspective on mental health and society at large.
You might find The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement by Dr. Thomas Szasz interesting[1].
In this book Dr. Szasz historically shows the startling revelation of how modern psychiatry evolved out of and is the modern day equivalent of the Inquisition. As the church lost its control over the state during the Enlightenment, witches were relabeled as crazies and the supralegal role of social control was taken over by the psychiatric state.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/Manufacture-Madness-Comparative-Inqui...
After the Enlightenment, Church was separated from State, but the need for the subjugation of thought criminals remained. In fact, the first psychiatrists asserted that the witches of the Inquisition were in fact just insane people.
The Soul was rebranded as the Mind, and heretics were rebranded as insane while the truth about the mind remained a mystery.
