manuscript-day 208 of 100  ‘Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated,” not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists,’ historian and writer Caleb Carr clarifies in a preliminary note to his 1994 thriller novel. In ‘The Alienist’ Laszlo Kreizler, psychiatrist, hunts down a serial killer—the story taking place in a hardly gaslit New York City of the year 1896. Not only Theodore Roosevelt makes a cameo appearance, but also Franz Boas, American anthropology’s founding father of … Continue reading →