The Clinical Works of James Frame (1860-65): The Philosophy of Insanity and The Asylum Diaries

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. His first clinical study, The Philosophy of Insanity, was published in three different cities in 1860, the long-lost pamphlet we have called The Asylum Diaries followed five years later. Frame understood that private asylums meant a higher death rate, simply because capital cares little or nothing about human lives. His cause was that of a humanitarian understanding of madness and a respect of transference. His relationship with his therapist allowed him to establish a relationship, identify with his hospital and its no restraint philosophy and build an identity upon this multi-layered transference. This book is for psychologists, students, psychiatrists and all those concerned about the very nature of madness as experience.