Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law, and Society in the Fin de Siècle

ISBN-13: 9780198229919 / Angielski / Twarda / 1989 / 376 str.

Ruth Harris

Opis

This is an interdisciplinary study of the debate on crime and madness in France between 1880 and 1914. Harris argues that the traditional bases of the French penal system were undermined at the time by psychiatric theories of human behavior and new sociological interpretations of crime, which challenged legal concepts of free will and moral responsibility. The book also examines the evolution of a new kind of knowledge, and shows how the politique criminelle envisaged by specialists was the result of the interaction among the bureaucratic culture of the magistrates, the clinical and scientific world of the psychiatrists, and the background of the defendants.

Recenzje

'elegantly researched and richly textured book ... this remains throughout a stimulating and imaginative book that should command the attention of cultural, social, and gender historians as well as historians of science and medicine.' Jan Goldstein, University of Chiacgo, American Historical Review, December 1991

Spis treści

Introduction; The medical approach; Medicine, law, and criminology; Legal procedures and medical intervention; Women, hysteria, and hypnotism; Female crimes of passion; Alcoholism and the working-class man; Men, honour, and crimes of passion,; Conclusion.