Description
Book SynopsisCombining the colorful intrigue of courtroom drama and the keen insights of social history, Unconscious Crime depicts Victorian England's legal and medical cultures confronting a new understanding of human behavior, and provocatively suggests these trials represent the earliest incarnation of double consciousness and multiple personality disorder.
Trade ReviewRiveting... A fascinating, if grim, analysis of an overlooked aspect of Victorian medico-legal history. Times Literary Supplement Eigen has interwoven... complex psychological, legal, and social issues in a fabric of compelling historical events, addressing timeless questions of the self, mind, memory, and what it means to be conscious or, simply, to be. -- Harold J. Bursztajn Journal of the American Medical Association 2004 This book shows how underneath the supposed hegemony of the restrictive M'Naghten Rules a long-term expansion of the universe of mental derangement was slowly taking place in the courts of Victorian England. It also carries forward the work Eigen did in his previous book, Witnessing Insanity: Madness and Mad Doctors in the English Court (1995), to debunk the fashionable notion of 'medical imperialism' and to show how the increasing use of medicine and psychiatry in criminal justice was being produced less by the ambitions of doctors and more by the actions of other 'players' in the legal process... It also reminds us of the relevance of criminal trials for understanding nineteenth century mentalities. -- Martin J. Wiener American Historical Review 2004 The stand alone chapters make it ideal for course reading. Eigen has accomplished the rare mix of combining academic rigour with a colourfully written, thumping good read. -- Sharon E. Mathews Medical History 2005 Eigen should definitely be praised for offering an overly ambitious but abridged medico-legal history that is both narratively engaging for a general readership and adhering rigidly to scholarly methods or academic canons of intellectual history. -- Pete N. Economou Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2006
Table of ContentsContents:Introduction ONE: Double Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century TWO: "Do You Remember Cardiff?" THREE: "I Mean She Was Quite Absent" FOUR: The Princess and the Cherry Juice FIVE: An Unconscious Poisoning SIX: Crimes of Automaton Conclusion
