This work provides an introduction to the history and sociology of mental illness and psychiatry in Europe from the early 19th-century onwards. In contrast with discourses affirming the radical alterity of such illness, it emphasizes the place and constituent role that madness played alongside social practices and knowledge about it in contemporary European societies.
Nicolas Henckes is a sociologist and researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). For the last two decades, his work has focused on transformations in the field of psychiatry since the 1950s, and has published several articles on this topic.
Benoît Majerus is an instructor and researcher at the University of Luxembourg. For the last fifteen years, he has been working on the history of psychiatry in 20th-century western Europe. He recently edited Material Cultures of Psychiatry (with Monika Ankele, Bielefeld, transcript, 2020).