It's Madness The Politics of Mental Health in Colonial Korea

며칠전에 역사학자 Nancy Rose Hunt  ( http://history.ufl.edu/directory/current-faculty/nancy-rose-hunt/ )세미나 배포자료에 인용되었던 책이다.  

책의 내용을 떠나 인문학적 관점에서 정신건강을 다루는 서적을 찾았다는 자체로 너무 기뻤다.

Ebook으로 샀다가 이런 책은 소장해야할것 같아서 종이책도 주문했다. 참조 문헌도 다양하고 흥미로운 책이다.

오늘 낮에 커피마시면서 마지막 결론까지 마저 읽었다.

1. 물론 굉장히 Durkheimien적 색이 강하고 Foucault의 느낌도 진하다. 

2. Mental illness/disorder/health와 같은 용어의 구분이  명확하지 않다 번역의 어려움도 있겠지만. ( Allan Young 의  'The Anthropologies of Illness and Sickness' 으로 설명은 대신한다

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.an.11.100182.001353?journalCode=anthro) 

3.  제목만 보고 Madness/Folie를 다룰거라 생각했지만 실제로 읽어보니 '경증'의 질환들을 다룬다 (névrose, hystérie etc etc). 'madness/folie/광기'에서 특히 정신건강(Mental Health)의 개념을 차용할 경우 대개 우선 psychose를 연상시키기 마련이다. 

좋은 책을 써주신 저자에게 감사드린다.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520289307/its-madness

It’s Madness examines Korea’s years under Japanese colonialism, when mental health first became defined as a medical and social problem. As in most Asian countries, severe social ostracism, shame, and fear of jeopardizing marriage prospects compelled most Korean families to conceal the mentally ill behind closed doors. This book explores the impact of Chinese traditional medicine and its holistic approach to treating mental disorders, the resilience of folk illnesses as explanations for inappropriate and dangerous behaviors, the emergence of clinical psychiatry as a discipline, and the competing models of care under the Japanese colonial authorities and Western missionary doctors. Drawing upon unpublished archival as well as printed sources, this is the first study to examine the ways in which “madness” was understood, classified, and treated in traditional Korea and the role of science in pathologizing and redefining mental illness under Japanese colonial rule.