Dom wariatów – miejsce i doświadczenie
The Insane Asylum – Site and Experience

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this text is to depict the sort of men- tal hospital that emerges from widely understood me- dical literature – reports, scientific articles, textbooks intended for nurses and psychiatrists as well as specia- l-occasion material. The application of an anthropo- logical interpretation – by referring to the symbolic of the home, mental illnesses, the problem of liminality and otherness, as well as rules organising scientific co- gnition and treatment, including the mechanism of control, discipline and punishment – makes it possible to treat the 'insane asylum’' as aparadoxical and am- bivalent space. The principle of ambivalence may be observed by considering the terrain of the hospital in different interpretations, as an example of asituation of an encounter of the intellect and mindlessness, an asylum and aprison, arefuge and aplace of exile. It reflects not only the culturally determined ambiguity of madness, but also the specificity and 'inner rent' of the psychiatric discourse, in which the biological and humanistic perspectiveconstantly confront each other; this, in turn, can affect the way of conceptuali- sing mental disturbances, the perception of the sick and subsequent therapy.

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