ABSTRACT
Yet madness, like death is something most people prefer to see in its most mythical and sensational forms in literature and at the cinema rather than confront in reality. Asylum as escape from pressure or protection from harm has thus featured little in the popular imagination. As Foucault (1965) put it:
In the serene world of mental illness, modern man no longer communicates with the madman… As for a common language, there is no such thing; or rather, there is no such thing any longer… the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue.
