Compulsion to order

Societies create rules and orders, declare them to be binding, and enforce them on their members with coercion if necessary. Psychiatry specializes in disorders of the self, which are diagnosed as mental illnesses and are to be cured with medical help. An important means to this end was the psychiatric asylum, which is the focus of this book. Here, in a segregated area on the fringes of society, "unreasonable" people who could no longer cope with themselves and the demands of society were to be treated so that they could reintegrate into the social order. This study examines the role psychiatry played in the production and reproduction of various dimensions of order and how order and coercion are related. It first deals on a theoretical-methodological level with the th.