What is a summary of the article "Possession or Insanity?: Two Views from the Victorian Lunatic Asylum"?

If you do not have time to read, there is a shortcut to summarizing an article. First, read the introduction. In an article of this length, the introduction could be anywhere from three to five paragraphs. The introduction will contain the thesis statement, the article's main argument, or the problem that the article will tackle.

In this article, the "problem" to be discussed is mentioned in the fourth paragraph. Ossa-Richardson wants to address the impact...

If you do not have time to read, there is a shortcut to summarizing an article. First, read the introduction. In an article of this length, the introduction could be anywhere from three to five paragraphs. The introduction will contain the thesis statement, the article's main argument, or the problem that the article will tackle.

In this article, the "problem" to be discussed is mentioned in the fourth paragraph. Ossa-Richardson wants to address the impact of the one group whose influence in asylums in post-Enlightenment England is not often discussed: chaplains. It is from here that the author can describe how medical science, which had influenced legislation on dealing with the insane, contended with religious figures in the Age of Rationalism. Ossa-Richardson wonders, in the fifth paragraph, how chaplains perceived madness—as a "theological" or a "scientific" problem?

To learn how Ossa-Richardson details his argument, read the topic sentences, or the first sentence of each paragraph. He tells us that numerous chaplains wrote about insanity and that most tried to find some compromise between science and superstition. He focuses on an article written by Joseph Souter and published in 1855. Souter uses the New Testament to argue that there was never a such thing as possession, only "madmen and epileptics." The counterargument comes from Souter's critic, John May, who not only accuses Souter of misreading the New Testament, but also insists that madness was an effect of possession. Scriptural interpretation (or misinterpretation) informed clerics' ideas about the causal link between demoniacal possession and madness.

Some theologians, such as Johann August Neander, drew a link between illness and sin. He saw "demoniacs as victims of the Devil" and believed that their conditions were "the direct result of their sin." This view of madness, as directly influenced by the Devil and not demons, was "the product of German theology developed in reaction to rationalism."

By the 1850s, there was some rapprochement between the two schools, in that physicians could accept "the existence of a kind of insanity defined by a lesion in the will," which manifested "in acts of violence and immorality." 

The last three paragraphs comprise the author's conclusion. In it, he concludes that "to listen to the chaplains . . . is to hear the other side of the Enlightenment," as well as "the compromise between science and theology, and its implications for psychiatric practice."