MADNESS & SOCIETY IN THE MODERN AGE
09:45, Tuesday 1
st June 2021 – 09:45, Thursday 3
rd June 2021
(48 hours)
Answer TWO questions.
Each answer should be no more than 3 pages of text PLUS up to 1 optional
additional page of figures and figure legends PLUS further page(s) for up to 10 key
references per essay.
Please indicate on your answer paper which question you have attempted.
Complete as a word-processed document using 1.5 line spacing, Arial font (10 pt or
bigger) and margins of 2.5 cm on all sides of an A4 page.
Unauthorised late submissions will be penalised.
The University of Manchester, 2020
HSTM30832–HSTM40332–UCIL30832–UCIL30332
1. Philippe Pinel is celebrated as a founding father of modern scientific
psychiatry, who liberated the insane from their chains. Was the history of
mental illness in nineteenth century Britain a history of liberation or of
confinement
2. Elaine Showalter argued that madness in Victorian Britain was first and
foremost a ‘female malady’. Is she right Weigh up the evidence.
3. How have theories of human evolution shaped understandings of and
attitudes towards mental illness in the nineteenth century
4. How and why did the First World War change attitudes towards and practices
around mental illness in Britain
5. Why were that leucotomies justifiable in the 1940s but are unacceptable
today
6. Nikolas Rose has argued that ‘the new neurochemical self is flexible and can
be reconfigured in a way that blurs the boundaries between cure,
normalization, and the enhancement of capacities’. Is he right Use examples
to support your answer
