The Malefactor Authenticated

It is important, perhaps decisive, for the place madness was to occupy in modern culture, that homo medicus was not called into the world of confinement as an arbiter, to divide what was crime from what was madness, what was evil from what was illness, but rather as a guardian, to protect others from the vag e danger that exuded through the walls of confinement. 

The denunciation of persons as witches, their examination for witch s marks, and their torture to extract confessions, served only to secure their formal, legal definition as witches and to justify their sentencing, usually to death by burning at the stake. We are now ready to examine the witch trial and compare it with contemporary legal proceedings to establish a person s status as mentally ill. 

The person accused of mental illness is in a similar situation. He too, instead of being treated as a respectable adult suspected of crime, is treated in a paternalistic fashion, as might a naughty child by a father who knows best. Accounts of involuntary psychiatric interventions—and by this I mean any contact with a psychiatrist not actively sought by the patient—illustrate the similarities between the procedures characteristic of Institutional Psychiatry and of the Inquisition. A brief example should suffice here. 

One morning, a man announces to his wife that there is a unicorn in the garden. She replies You are a booby, and I am going to have you put in the booby-hatch. The husband, Who had never liked the words booby and booby-hatch, [says] We ll see about that. The wife sends for the police and the psychiatrist. They arrive. She tells them her story. Did you tell your wife you saw a unicorn they ask the husband. Of course not, said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That s all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist.. .. So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after.  

The main similarity between the work of the inquisitor and that of the contemporary psychiatrist charged with ascertaining a per- 

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