Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe

This major new study of psychiatry and psychology--during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--traces the struggle between politics and popular culture which influenced the scientific revolution. David Lederer explores the treatment of mental illness in society before the emergence of professional psychiatry, the use of spiritual remedies ('spiritual physic') to deal with physical and mental ailments from melancholy to demonic possession, how early modern people understood the soul and the impact of the Counter-Reformation on all these issues.