Discounted Persons
In addition to the general advancement of medical training and knowledge in the 18th and 19th Centuries, there were changing trends in the classification and treatment of mental illness; people attempted to visually recognize and search for the symptoms of mental illness, which caused certain physical traits being stigmatized, and the treatment of mental illness shifted to separating the stigmatized mentally ill population from “normal” society, leading to the birth of the "lunatic asylum."
Goffman notes that the visibility of stigma is based on the "decoding capacity of the audience (Goffman, 1963, pg. 51)," which was done at this time by placing the mentally ill apart from the general population and by determining ways to visually recognize them.
This exhibit will look at two important asylums: London's Bethlem Hospital and New York City's Blackwell's Island, as well as the theories of visually and physically classifying mental states through physiognomy and phrenology.
