A separate world? : the social position of the mentally ill in New Zealand society, 1945-1955

69 leaves ; 30 cm. Includes bibliographical references. Typescript (photocopy). "October 1998."“Rather than asking what, in a given period is regarded as sanity or insanity, as mental illness or normal behaviour, I wanted to ask how these divisions are operated.” Despite its intriguing possibilities and contemporary relevance, Foucault's question has been largely left unexplored in a New Zealand context. Accepting the disjunction between reason and madness at face value, historians of mental illness have focused on either government policy and psychiatric practice or the experience of incarceration. The exclusivity of these approaches has marginalised the role of families and public attitudes, and has denied the existence of a dialogue between the mad and the sane. It is the intention of this essay to delve into these gaps; to examine the manner in which the State, medical practitioners, the public, families, and patients themselves negotiated a certain degree of division between the worlds of madness and non-madness in mid-twentieth century New Zealand. [excerpt from Introduction