ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to survey a history of cultural settings within which ideas about madness have evolved, to capture a sense of their developing social character. It examines questions of social difference, identity, perceptions of normality and also issues of fear and anxiety, the intention is to expose contexts from which contemporary society and culture have come to generate popular meanings about madness. The chapter also examines several authors explore madness and historical contexts and therefore, the work of Roy Porter, Michel Foucault, Denise Jodelet, R. D. Laing, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas Szasz, Elaine Showalter and Andrew T. Scull. In the eighteenth century neurology developed, creating new methods of treating patients. These developments laid foundations for psychiatry to further reason about mental health conditions: George Nesse Hill and John and Thomas Mayo addressed the organic nature of mental health problems, providing graphic evidence of skull damage and brain tumours.
