Robert Smith

This was the first book I read that went against the grain of television, radio, movies, and college education. It was original and brilliant. After reading it, I stopped being a mere consumer and follower of trends. It woke me up intellectually.

I read part of this book in its original French version up to the history of psych wards in France during the seventeenth century, and it made me very angry -- not because it wasn't true but rather because I identified with the poor souls who suffered torture at the hands of rational society in the age of Reason. The book didn't cover the history of psychiatry in the twentieth century, which is what I and my colleagues were exposed to under the form of medication, lobotomies, shock treatment and police brutality. In the Hôpital Général in France in the seventeenth century, the mentally ill were forced to pray for hours and hours every day, confined in what turned into psychiatry wards in more recent times. What definitely happened is that Reason became the buzz word of society after the Renaissance -- making madness a crime.