Discuss why mental illness expanded dramatically from the period of the Renaissance. Relate this effect to theories of deviance. For example, how is deviance defined? And how is it coped with in terms of society’s responses to mental illness (hint: define in terms of concepts containment and exclusion? Relate leprosy (largely cured at this time), to crime and punishment, and to how people who are ‘insane’ are dealt with. How is sanity defined according to Michel Foucault? Relate this phenomenon to the Stanford Prison experiment. Include in your essay a discussion of the situations involved, the types of roles, and what the results say about human nature and the environment. What caused the subjects to behave the way they did?
