{"id":51061,"date":"2018-10-23T15:11:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T19:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=51061"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:45:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:45:02","slug":"madness-modern-times","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/madness-modern-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Madness in Modern Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Madness in Modern Times\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The history of mental illness is a dark and fragmented one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“You can go to asylums in the United States and they’ve got graveyards” made up of “rows and rows of . . . these little white crosses and stones,” says Carleton Prof. James Miller, who teaches and researches the history of mental illness. “These people don’t even have names; you have no idea who they are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the history of mental illness is tragic and brutal, Miller looks at it from an empathetic perspective to try to understand the individuals caught up in shifting understandings of the causes and treatments of madness over the centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“It’s not just about the guy who invented the lobotomy, it’s about the people who underwent the lobotomy,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Miller first became interested in research and teaching about “mad studies” (the name comes from the mad pride movement – in some respects similar to the queer pride movement which involves “reclaiming the label and taking it back as a positive”)  when he was introduced to the genre of “outsider art.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outsider art is artwork created by untaught artists, often only discovered and highlighted after their deaths. Artwork created by asylum patients is an especially popular form of outsider art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Madness
The Tale Tersely Told<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of Miller’s favourite pieces of asylum artwork is The Tale Tersely Told <\/em>by John Gilmour. A bookkeeper turned sugar trader, Gilmour spent more than 10 years in various asylums internationally, but his longest stay was at Crichton Royal Institute in Dumfries, Scotland. The artwork Gilmour created there opens a window into his life inside the asylum.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“I love the fact that these people are in far more desperate conditions than I’ll ever experience but they’re compelled to create something,” Miller says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

“We’ll always have these artworks these people created. I think so often there’s no voices for the mad . . .  so these artworks speak for them in a very powerful way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tale Tersely Told <\/em>shows Gilmour and other asylum patients sitting on the safety valve of a steam boiler, questioning their doctor’s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He created these drawings to express his belief that he was being tortured and oppressed by the asylum superintendents and staff, while his relatives were being lied to about his condition,” Miller says.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Madness<\/figure>\n\n\n

Struggling with Mental Illness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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His research and teachings come from a powerfully personal place- Miller has struggled with a mental illness of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’ve dealt with pretty severe depression on and off since I was a teenager,” he says. “The key for me is not seeing it as your whole personality. We never talk about people as being a cancer, it’s a person with cancer. It’s a facet of you, it’s not an all consuming characteristic. I think that’s one of the things I try and get across in class, the complexity and diversity of experience.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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