ABSTRACT
In all cultures and in all times, the perception of madness, possession or mental disorder has created a conflict between fear and compassion (Porter 1993). Scrope Davies, viewing the ruins of a once proud empire, Babylon, reflected this ambivalence and the tragedy of the ‘human mind in ruins’. This goes to the heart of the practice problem which, in a civilised society, should excite sympathy and a search for understanding. From the Old Testament, which feeds into the Christian, Islamic and Jewish faiths, we hear the psalmist hope that he will not be smitten by ‘the moon at night’ (Psalm 121). For to be ‘moonstruck’ was a description of madness that echoed well into the nineteenth century, seen in the word ‘lunatic’. Hence, in 1820, the Lunatic Asylum Act sought to give refuge to the afflicted, not least in recognition that even the highest in the land, the late King George III, like King Lear, had admitted that ‘I fear I am not in my perfect mind’. The term ‘lunacy’ was used as late as 1890 in the Lunacy Act, which was concerned with the compulsory admission of ‘poor lunatics’, and the term was not abandoned until the 1935 Mental Health Act.
