Description

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 1, No. 2, 191-206 (1990)

Gill Speak

A history of psychiatry, says Tellenbach, should ideally be a 'history of problems', describing not only abnormal psychic states, but also historical attitudes towards them, by recourse to ideological and sociological factors. This research should then lead to rediscoveries of the past, often conceived as new revelations. In accordance with these premises, the present study describes the glass delusion of Early Modern Europe, not as a series of isolated cases, but viewed within a contemporary cultural setting, for the Glass Man's cry of pain is only truly audible through the layman's literature. A brief survey of modern variants on this delusion reveals that man's preoccupation with the problem of body-soul remains largely unchanged