SCULL, Andrew 1947-

PERSONAL: Born May 2, 1947, in Edinburgh, Scotland; came to the United States, 1969; son of Allan Edward (a civil engineer) and Marjorie (a college teacher; maiden name, Corrigan) Scull; married Nancy Principi (a lawyer), August 16, 1970; children: Anna Theresa, Andrew Edward, Alexander. Education: Balliol College, Oxford, B.A. (with first class honors), 1969; Princeton University, M.A. (Sociology), 1971, Ph.D., 1974. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, travel.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Sociology, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92037. Agent—Peters, Fraser, & Dunlop, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA, England; Sterling Lord, 65 Bleeker St., New York, NY 10012. E-mail—[email protected]

CAREER: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, lecturer, 1973-74, assistant professor of sociology, 1974-78; University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, associate professor, 1978-82, professor of sociology, 1982—, chairman of department, 1985-89, professor of science studies, 1988—. Visiting fellow at University of London, 1977, Princeton University, 1978-79, and Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1981-82; Hannah Lecturer in the History of Medicine, 1983; Squibb Lecturer in the History of Psychiatry, University of London, 1986.

MEMBER: Phi Beta Kappa (honorary member).

AWARDS, HONORS: American Council of Learned Societies fellow, 1976-77; Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies fellow, 1978-79; Guggenheim fellow, 1981-82; University of California President's Research Fellowship in the Humanities, 1989-90, 2001-2002.

WRITINGS:

Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1977, 2nd edition, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1984.

Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1979.

(Editor) Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1981.

(With Steven Lukes) Durkheim and the Law, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1983.

(With Stanley Cohen) Social Control and the State: Historical and Comparative Essays, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1983.

Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1989.

(Editor and author of introduction) W. A. F. Browne, The Asylum As Utopia: W. A. F. Browne and the Mid-Nineteenth Century Consolidation of Psychiatry (from an 1837 volume entitled What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought to Be), Routledge (New York, NY), 1991.

The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1993.

(With Charlotte MacKenzie and Nicholas Hervey) Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1996.

(With Jonathan Andrews) Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2001.

(With Jonathan Andrews) Customers and Patrons of the Mad-trade: The Management of Lunacy in Eighteenth-Century London, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2002.

Coeditor, "Research in Law, Deviance, and Social Control" series, JAI Press, 1984—. Contributor to scholarly texts, including Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance, 1972; Corrections and Punishment: Structure, Function, and Process, 1977; and The Power to Punish, 1983. Contributor to sociology, psychiatry, and medical journals and other periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Desperate Remedies: A History of Somatic Treatments in Psychiatry.

SIDELIGHTS: Andrew Scull specializes in studies of the insane of the past and the present. The latter subject is the topic of his first book, Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View. This volume is, according to a critic for Working Papers for a New Society, "not only the best overview of this decade's 'reforms' [in psychiatric care] but also the best analysis of how the reforms have failed." Kim Hopper of the Health-PAC Bulletin describes Scull as "an able and effective historian, a shrewd critic, and a clear, compelling writer," and calls Decarceration "closely documented and carefully argued, . . . [a book]without parallel in the recent literature on psychiatric and penal institutions."

Turning toward history, Scull produced two similarly themed volumes. The first, Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England, was published in 1979. Fourteen years later came The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900, a study of asylums and their effects on the public. In the nineteenth century, pressure to bring down the cost of caring for the insane led to institutional overcrowding; at the same time, senior citizens whose overall health was failing were often admitted to asylums by their families. Comparing this work to Museums of Madness, T. H. Turner of the British Medical Journal found that The Most Solitary of Afflictions was not "a new book," though the critic also acknowledged that "the additions . . . are an improvement" on the earlier volume. Likewise, Sociology contributor Joan Busfield called The Most Solitary of Afflictions "essentially a revised version" of Museum of Madness. Turner pointed to "the opening review of the rise of asylum," which Turner called "both eclectic and thoughtful, the best summary of modern research yet available." In Busfield's view, The Most Solitary of Afflictions "is much more thorough and detailed than Museums of Madness." The author, she added, "has clearly taken the opportunity of the fifteen years since the first book was published to examine a far broader range of historical sources." Busfield concluded that the latter book "provides a fuller and more historically grounded picture of the rise of asylums than its more schematic predecessor. Yet, precisely because of the greater substantive detail, the key arguments stand out less clearly."

The word bedlam originated from a slang name for London's New Bethlehem Hospital, a notorious insane asylum of centuries past. Andrew Scull examines the history and legacy of such institutions in his book Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade. In Victorian times, noted an Economist reviewer, "mad people, a messy and embarrassing feature of society, were . . . rounded up, cleaned up and put away." Indeed, the transformation of London from an agrarian to an industrial society had produced the kind of wealth that enabled the upper classes to "afford new luxuries: soap, servants, painters, plays—and treatment for their mad relations." But despite the proliferation of asylums and the growth industry of medical reformers, real progress in treating the mentally ill was slow. Doctors who disapproved of such common treatments as leeches and manacles "were a minority," noted the Economist reviewer.

Oonagh Walsh of the Historian found Masters of Bedlam an "admirably collaborative volume" that "examines the lives of seven mad-doctors, or 'alienists,' as they preferred to be titled." These medical men challenged the system by advocating new and better research into their patients' conditions as part of the emerging science of psychiatry. "This is not a study of great men," Walsh pointed out. "Some of these figures are deservedly obscure—but their lives provide a useful commentary upon the acceptance of psychiatry as a worthy branch of the medical profession."

Scull and coauthor Jonathan Andrews came upon a valuable archival resource in the case-book of "mad-doctor" John Monro, who practiced in the eighteenth century. From that discovery came their 2001 study Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England. "Neither a conventional biography nor simply a study of an emerging profession," stated Times Literary Supplement reviewer Chandak Sengoopta, "the book seeks to illuminate the lives, sorrows, crime and mores of a complex, changing society." During the eighteenth century, the reputations of Monro "depended far less on his ability to cure than on his management of his trade and social image," Sengoopta commented. "As Andrews and Scull show us, the death of reason was then regarded as even more frightening than physical death, and mad-doctors akin to undertakers in their commerce with madness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

AB Bookman's Weekly, April 26 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era, p. 3301.

Albion, spring, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700-1900, p. 166; spring, 1998, review of Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade, p. 138.

American Historical Review, June, 1982, review of Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England, p. 780; April, 1991, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder: Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective, p. 478; December, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 1691; June, 1998, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 886.

American Journal of Psychiatry, December, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 1832.

American Journal of Sociology, March, 1982, review of Museums of Madness, p. 1232, review of Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View, p. 1234.

British Book News, March, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 160.

British Medical Journal, September 4, 1993, T. H. Turner, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 632.

Choice, April, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 1096; March, 1983, review of Museums of Madness and Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 946; October, 1989, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 395; May, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 1580.

Commonweal, July 12, 1985, review of Decarceration, p. 412.

Contemporary Psychology, February, 1995, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 109.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 1981, review of Decarceration, p. 289; May, 1981, review of Museums of Madness, p. 658; September, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 747; January, 1998, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 103.

Economist, March 15, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. S10.

English Historical Review, April, 1983, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 388; February, 1996, L. S. Jacyna, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 212.

Guardian Weekly, July 4, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 29.

Health-PAC Bulletin, September-October, 1977, Kim Hopper, review of Decarceration.

Historian, November, 1980, review of Museums of Madness, p. 111; November, 1983, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 97; spring, 2001, Oonagh Walsh, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 693. History, April, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 149.

Isis, March, 1992, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 152; September, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 526; June, 1999, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 378.

Journal of American Folklore, fall, 1992, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 518.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 1990, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 663; winter, 1996, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 496.

Journal of Modern History, September, 1983, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 524; December, 1996, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 982.

Journal of Social History, summer, 1991, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 881; summer, 1994, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 883.

Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 1996, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 1593.

Library Journal, September 15, 1981, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 1732; October 15, 1996, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 79; January, 2002, Eric Albright, review of Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England, p. 141.

London Review of Books, March 6, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 29.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 30, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 7.

Medical Humanities Review, January, 1990, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 36.

Nature, July 15 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 200.

New Scientist, August 25, 1989, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 29; February 1, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 45.

New Statesman and Society, August 25, 1989; May 21, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 36.

New York Review of Books, December 16, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, November 25, 1996, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 65.

Readings, December, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 28.

Science Books and Films, September, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 24.

SciTech Book News, September, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 31.

Social Forces, September, 1981, review of Museums of Madness, p. 261; December, 1998, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 804.

Sociological Review, February, 1980, review of Museums of Madness, p. 195; August, 1990, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 602; February, 1995, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 218.

Sociology, September, 1980, review of Museums of Madness, p. 171; May, 1994, Joan Busfield, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 594.

Spectator, March 1, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 33.

Times Literary Supplement, January 8, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 23; July 7-13, 1989, review of Social Order/Mental Disorder, p. 74; July 30, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 5; August 8, 1997, review of Masters of Bedlam, p. 36; March 22, 2002, Chandak Sengoopta, "Cruden's Discordance," p. 7.

Victorian Studies, autumn, 1982, review of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen, p. 106; winter, 1997, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 360.

Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 117.

Washington Post Book World, July 4, 1993, review of The Most Solitary of Afflictions, p. 13.

Working Papers for a New Society, May-June, 1978, review of Decarceration.