Drawing madness

by DRM

1857 lith­o­graph by Armand Gau­tier, show­ing per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of demen­tia, mega­lo­ma­nia, acute mania, melan­cho­lia, idiocy, hal­lu­ci­na­tion, erotic mania and paral­y­sis in the gar­dens of the Hos­pice de la Salpêtrière.

In an attempt to cat­a­log mad­ness, the artist has cre­ated a zoo exhibit for lunacy.

They are curi­ous objects, these women who have lost their mind with such inten­sity that they have to be locked up behind thick, high walls.

We look at this illus­tra­tion with detach­ment, as an his­tor­i­cal odd­ity. But once it was a diag­nos­tic tool: a young med­ical stu­dent with an inter­est in the ill­ness of the mind would study this lith­o­graph and, on the basis of a woman’s appear­ance, cou­pled with her behav­ior, deter­mine what men­tal ill­ness she suf­fered and what treat­ment she should get.

A woman would pay a pro­found cost for being declared mad.

Today’s diag­nos­tic devices are not much bet­ter. The lith­o­graph has been replaced with video of ther­a­peu­tic ses­sions, treat­ments and symp­toms. The doc­tor still works with a check list of ques­tions, try­ing to tri­an­gu­late pat­terns of excite­ment, absence of con­trol, las­si­tude and apa­thy to make a diag­no­sis that can be man­aged with pills and talk.

The effort is sin­cere but super­fi­cial. Mad­ness is a mystery.

Don’t think mad­ness doesn’t exist, or that it is a gift from God, a sign of genius, a cre­ative emblem. Mad­ness is pure pain, a deep, impen­e­tra­ble hole where noth­ing makes sense.