
02/13/2025
This book opens with the Devil asking Frame to kill his wife in 1843. He struggles with this murderous impulse and asks for help. The early period in Gartnavel asylum, Edinburgh is one of melancholia pain and anguish – he leaves the asylum only to return years later when it is run according to the principles of no restraint — that is an early form of institutional psychotherapy. Frame, who appears to have left school early, establishes a very good relationship with his therapist and identifies with the no restraint philosophy of the asylum and, more generally, with the question of how lunatics should be treated. The patient studies his own case, the cases of others and the very nature of madness. He is thought to have spent many hours in the hospital library, studying the medical psychology of the day. https://novapublishers.com/shop/the-clinical-works-of-james-frame-1860-65-the-philosophy-of-insanity-and-the-asylum-diaries/