Gladys Swain

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Gladys Swain (1945–1993) was a French psychiatrist who is remembered today for her books about the history of Psychiatry and her critique of the views of Michel Foucault on the changing attitudes towards madness in western civilization.

Swain's best known works are Le subject de la folie (1977), Dialogue avec l'insensé (1994), and Le vrai Charcot (1997), the last two co-authored with Marcel Gauchet. Her disagreements with Foucault are on two levels. On a factual level she provides new information about the birth of Psychiatry in France through the efforts of Pinel and his followers which Foucault was apparently unaware of. On a philosophical level she takes issue with Foucault’s view that the locking up of the insane in asylums after about 1800 was caused by a growing intolerance of what is strange or different. While agreeing that in the Middle Ages the insane were accepted as part of society and free to wander about, she attributes the creation of the first asylums to the discovery that the insane were not mindless or controlled by outside forces, but were full human beings whose problems could perhaps be understood and mitigated. She does agree that the first efforts to do so were harsh and clumsy, but denies they were aimed purely at repression, as Foucault thought.

Works

Le sujet de la folie: Naissance de la psychiatrie., 1977, ISBN 2708930133
with Marcel Gauchet: La pratique de l’esprit humain. L'institution asilaire et la révolution démocratique, Paris, Gallimard, 1980
with Marcel Gauchet: Dialogue avec l'insensé: Essais d'histoire de la psychiatrie., Paris, Gallimard 1994, ISBN 2070739082
with Marcel Gauchet: Le vrai Charcot, Calmann-Levy, 1997.

Authority control	VIAF: 114751441 ISNI: 0000 0001 1084 8871 BNF: cb119258100

Persondata
Name	Swain, Gladys
Alternative names
Short description	French psychiatrist
Date of birth	1945
Place of birth
Date of death	1993
Place of death

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