""Seeing the Insane" is a visual history of the stereotypes that have shaped the perception of the mentally ill from medieval through modern times. The result is nearly as heartbreaking as a visual history of the Holocaust. In picture after picture, the book portrays centuries of intolerance for deviance, mindless cruelty, unthinking prejudice, and self-righteous abuse of the weak and ill." - "American Journal of Psychiatry". "As extraordinary in concept as it is in its execution...This remarkable book helps laymen as well as specialists to see the insane, but it does far more. When we study the past, we understand the present. When we see the conventional stereotype images of insanity, we find they still color our concepts of madness. Through these pictures of the insane, we see all humanity. We look, not through a glass darkly, but through a multiplicity of media, brightly." - "Antiquarian Bookman". "Seeing the Insane" is a richly detailed cultural history of madness and art in the Western world, showing how the portrayal of stereotypes has both reflected and shaped the perception and treatment of the mentally disturbed. Sander L. Gilman is Henry R.

Luce Professor of the Liberal Arts in Human Biology at the University of Chicago. The late Eric T. Carlson, M.D., was a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.