Trivia: When Watching "Lunatics" Was Entertainment

Reminds me of those old articles and stories of folks in the Victoria era going to "theaters" to watch mentally ill patients being experimented on. Ugh. The things they did that I read on that topic were horrific.

And this is different from Springer, Maury, and countless youtube videos how?

Britney Spears and her inane media frenzy have filled this void well.

Psychiatry has always torutured and mistreated it's patients. Nowadyas they mistreat them by diagnosing dangerous pills that cause suicide, psychosis, nerve damage, diabetis, etc... Not to mention their use of ice picks to the brain and electric shock.

Psychiatry has never been a humane profession, and is in't these days either. In America you get locked up against your will without commiting a crime - they call it 'protective custody.' In Russia you disappear off the streets and get loaded up with drugs because you oppose the government or psychiatry.

Heh. Retarded people are funny...
Uhm. I mean.. This is horrible! Why would people do that..?

Tim-

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Go take your meds and come back when you've calmed down.

same theory apparently works with television

I think bean would've been one of the people in line waiting to offer up their pennies...

Hey, like reality television. We've come a long way.

Tim doesn't like psychiatry.

bean
lol

Mental illness is not funny. At All. Having had a family member touched by it, my perspective has changed dramatically. The prison system has become the de facto way a society that is unwilling to deal with the issue "handles" the problems. No real treatment, no real progress. Put them away, out of sight, at minimum cost. It is appalling.

Makes me think of that short story in I Am Legend about the kids going to see the freakshow.

this gives me an excuse to spout off about a book i've just read called 'the air loom gang' by mike jay. it's the story of james tilley mathews, who because of his complex paranoid delusions and the ambitions of the apothecary at bethlem, co-instigated what is widely held to be the birth of psychiatry. he was also the first person recorded to have delusions about an 'influencing machine' (the air loom) controlling his thoughts. before him, it was all demons, witches etc.

it seems the freakshow image of the bethlem hospital is a bit of a caricature - there were plenty of mad people kicking around london anyway, so paying a penny to go and see more wasn't on the agenda for most. the bethlem mostly failed as an institution because it was built on the cheap. it's an absolutely superb book. i'll shut up now.

The creation of torture devices, in general, used to be for entertainment purposes. The public viewing of those within their community, that had done bad.

p.s. Bedlam - Boris Karlof

CheeseDuck-
Mental illness is NOT the same as mental retardation. Many mentally ill people are very intelligent.

I imagine people in 100 years time will look back on "Big Brother" and the like and make largely the same comments.