History of Psychiatry

After beginning his historical work in Switzerland in the 1950s and then continuing it in the United States at the Menninger Foundation, Henri Ellenberger (1905–1993) became the leading historian of " dynamic psychiatry ". This expression commonly denotes mental medicine that draws from psychotherapeutic practices and psychological theories to improve our understanding of mental diseases and to cure them. Although still used today, usually in juxtaposition to 19th century alienism or to biological psychiatry, the origin and meaning of this expression are unclear. An unpublished lecture (1956) by Ellenberger on this subject, accompanied by an explanatory introduction, is reproduced here to shed light on Ellenberger's interpretation of that term. This article additionally aims to draw certain parallels and distinctions between Ellenberger, Michel Foucault and George Devereux's teaching in the 1950s. Considering that the history of psychiatry is now a well-established speciality in the academic world, Ellenberger's lecture is also an original document which enables us to trace the professionalization of psychiatric historiography as an academic discipline back to its beginnings after World War II.

"En esta recopilación inédita de ensayos Jean Starobinski gira en torno a la ‘conciencia del propio cuerpo’, desde «El filósofo acostado» hasta «Incierta presencia», que cierra el libro.

El libro incluye, además de las aproximaciones históricas a esa conciencia tan especial, dos extraordinarios ensayos sobre Flaubert y Valéry, un amplio diálogo donde expresa sus inquietudes intelectuales —entre los mundos poético y científico— y dos reflexiones sobre medicina, antimedicina y racionalidad. Esta original mirada sobre las razones del cuerpo, pues, está ofrecida en una literatura, entendida en la perspectiva más amplia, en donde concluyen todo tipo de lenguajes, como es propio de quien mejor ha descifrado a Montaigne, Rousseau y Diderot.

«El hombre acostado ha interrumpido los movimientos de los que se componen los gestos útiles. Se encuentra en los confines de la ausencia, se halla sumido en el sueño, o por el contrario se despierta, siente el cansancio o el bienestar del cuerpo, su pesadez o su ligereza. Las relaciones del interior y del exterior se simplifican, se hacen más misteriosas, más problemáticas. En la postura del abandono se puede acoger una revelación. Los filósofos no son los únicos en dar testimonio: los poetas, los novelistas saben a vaces, sobre estos estados, más que los metafísicos». Estas palabras anuncian los motivos de Razones del cuerpo."

The history of the mental hospital in Delhi is a fascinating story. Set up in colonial times, the asylum in Delhi seems
to reflect the tumultuous and chaotic history of the city itself. It was perhaps established in the early 19th century, and
functions till 1857, when it is ransacked in the Mutiny. It is subsequently merged with the asylum at Lahore in 1861,
set up again, and incredibly, closed again at the turn of the century. Subject to the whims of administrators and policy
makers, the asylum then ceases to exist till the 1960s when a new avatar appears. In it’s non continuity is the story of
the neglect of mental illness.

This paper aims at analyzing a specific aspect of Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed medical expertise, which is the very non-Freudian role he ascribes to dietetics in the treatment of “nervous” diseases. I first consider the philosophical justifications of such a psycho-dietetic approach, namely, Nietzsche’s mind-body monism and his cultural diagnosis of morbidity targeting the Judeo-Christian way of life. I then argue that Nietzsche’s dietetics is not therapeutic in an ordinary sense, both because it doesn’t prescribe universal recipes and because it doesn’t purport to suppress pain. Lastly, I show that the Nietzschean diet is beyond the reach of the typical “decadent”, insofar as the latter instinctively chooses a harmful regime.

Pasando la mayor parte de las veces desapercibidas, aunque existen ya desde hace ya mucho tiempo, no es raro encontrar en los más diversos entornos asistenciales psiquiátricos, ciertas publicaciones, en formato de periódico, revista o fanzine, realizadas por las personas allí atendidas. Nacidas primero en los hospitales psiquiátricos, más recientemente dieron un paso fuera y ampliaron su difusión a otros entornos comunitarios, impresas primero en papel para, en la actualidad, aprovecharse también de las potencialidades y economía del formato digital a través de Internet. Pero, a pesar de su amplia difusión y utilización, parecería que su existencia queda relegada a una especie de subproducto ocupacional, que apenas ha merecido la atención de la literatura académica y especializada, incluso obviando que su existencia se remonta a un ya muy lejano primer tercio del S. XIX. Solo las más recientes corrientes historiográficas son las que han empezado a considerar dichas publicaciones como una importante fuente de información y documentación desde la perspectiva de los propios pacientes. Este tipo de boletines resultan, además, un reflejo práctico de las diferentes modas y tendencias asistenciales predominantes a lo largo de sus ya casi dos siglos de vida, con una evolución que es la que intentaremos esquematizar en esta presentación, resumiéndola en diferentes etapas con sus matices diferenciales entre sí, en cuanto a su presentación formal, contenidos y objetivos.

This paper examines the history and philosophy of a little-known psychological experience: depersonalization. It explores it as a phenomenal experience and as a disorder. It examines nosological debates over the condition, both past and present. It presents speculative hypotheses about phenomenal consciousness, the self and sensation.

This book is OPEN ACCESS and available for download on JSTOR and other online repositories (see attached link to Cornell Press page and JSTOR DOI).

Institutionalizing Gender analyzes the relationship between class, gender, and psychiatry in France from 1789 to 1900, an era noteworthy for the creation of the psychiatric profession, the development of a national asylum system, and the spread of bourgeois gender values.

After the Revolution, a number of the psychiatrists who were enthusiastic about reforms rose to top positions in the new Soviet medical administration. The new government, it appeared, gave them carte blanche to do what they had always wanted: to build a new health care system on the principles they themselves could choose. Yet, in spite of this, the psychiatry that emerged out of the Soviet reforms was somewhat different from the liberal project of the pre-war period. The liberal project was intended to be a collective enterprise in which psychiatrists would join with the public in improving services to the people, creating an autonomous organisation free from outside pressures and funded centrally as well as locally. Instead, psychiatry became centralised, hierarchical and highly bureaucratic.

Article written for Robert Burns Lives! depository of Burns-related articles outlining the background to my doctoral research exploring the mental health of Robert Burns

URL: http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives246.htm

Published

'Strangers amongst us. Migrants and ethnic
minorities in Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid [Dutch mental health monthly], 1946-1991'
This article reviews and analyses the writings in
MGv ["Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid"; Dutch menatl health monthly, est. in 1946] about Jewish orphans, colonial returnees from
Indonesia, refugees, labour migrants and their
descendants. Very little attention was paid to such
groups before the 1980s. The author attributes this
to (a) the postwar taboo on making 'racial'
distinctions, (b) an unwillingness to acknowledge
that the Netherlands had become an immigration
country, and (c) the dominance of sociologists and
anthropologists in this field. As a consequence of
the latter factor, mental health professionals in the
1970s and early 1980s tended to view the
psychological problems of ethnic minorities as part
of a structural, social problem they could do little to
change. Only after they freed themselves of that
idea did they start understanding how they could
help migrants and minorities. The number of
relevant MGv contributions has risen sharply ever
since.

This article analyses the activity of psychiatric hospitalization between 1896-2019 in four different times (stories) in a peripheric territory in Spain: Ourense (Galicia). In 1896 at the Provincial General Hospital (Hospital de As Mercedes), in 1956 al the Mental State Hospital (monographic psychiatric asylum), in 2001 at the psychiatric hospitalization in a general hospital, and finally in the new ward of psychiatry at the Ourense’s Hospital. This article provides unpublished documents that allows to know the clinical aspects and the assistance given to mental patients at the different hospitals along the time studied

The existence of pediatric applications of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the 1940s in Italy has been neglected by international literature. However, 2 case reports by Ferdinando Accornero and Mario Anderson, both assistants of Ugo Cerletti at the Sapienza Clinic for Nervous and Mental Diseases, should be brought to the attention of historians of ECT. The work presented therein began in Rome in September 1940, approximately at the same time of the first reported ECT administration on a child in Bristol, United Kingdom. The 2 reports described applications on 19 children and adolescents during 3 different sessions (1940–1941, 1944–1947, and 1947–1949), with a 3-year-long interruption due to the circumstances of World War II. Unfortunately, this research appeared belatedly in 2 articles from 1948 and 1950, respectively, in an Italian journal with limited distribution, when more extensive research contributions on pediatric ECT had already received international exposure. The Italian reports may cast light on the progress made by the early generation of ECT researchers in the 1940s toward the refinement of ECT techniques and the subsequent identification of diagnostic indicators for ECT among children.

Aux origines du spectateur de cinéma.

Entre 1880 et 1920, les champs de la médecine, de la psychologie, de la neuropsychiatrie et de la psychanalyse élaborent des théories de la subjectivité marquées par les phénomènes intrigants de la neurasthénie, de l’hystérie et de l’hypnose. Alors que les discours sur les projections lumineuses s’approprient volontiers la culture du corps nerveux qui circule autour de 1900 dans l’imaginaire médical et populaire, on constate que, parallèlement, le cinématographe devient la nouvelle métaphore du psychisme.

Qu’y a-t-il donc de commun entre le cinéma et les disciplines médico-psychologiques au tournant du XXe siècle ? Sur quelles bases peut-on rapprocher la pratique culturelle des projections lumineuses et les théories du psychisme ? Comment comprendre l’intérêt des savants pour le cinéma et l’influence des sciences sur la manière d’appréhender l’expérience filmique ?

L’ouvrage de Mireille Berton (Section d’histoire et esthétique du cinéma) répond à ces questions en plaçant au centre de l’analyse l’imaginaire du corps nerveux. L’auteure développe une histoire culturelle des premiers spectateurs dans ses interactions avec les disciplines médico-psychologiques.

"Dans l’ensemble, La fin de l’asile? Histoire de la déhospitalisation psychiatrique dans l’espace francophone au XXe siècle est de grande qualité et constitue un apport considérable aux études des transformations des services de santé mentale dans la francophonie. Même si  l’ouvrage  traverse  plusieurs  régions  géographiques,  son  fil  conducteur  est  clair.  La  vision de la déhospitalisation mise de l’avant est nuancée et sobre — les directeurs et la
Lu pour vousReflets — Vol. 25, No 2, automne 2019180directrice de l’ouvrage atteignent donc leur objectif de démythifier la déhospitalisation. Les diverses sources mobilisées illustrent l’apport de la recherche archivistique dans la compréhension de phénomènes parfois difficiles à saisir. Ainsi, La fin de l’asile? Histoire de la déhospitalisation psychiatrique dans l’espace francophone au XXe siècle saura captiver quiconque s’intéresse non seulement à l’histoire de la psychiatrie, mais aussi (et surtout) à son avenir"

Purpose. To show the contribution of different psychopathological stances in shaping the concept of anorexia nervosa through history.
Methods. Description of the most relevant observations of clinical cases, from XVIII to early XX century.
Results. The clinical descriptions were shaped by the clinical questions the physicians wanted to investigate. We found medical and psychopathological questions. The former focused on somatic differential diagnosis, measurement of bodily signs and symptoms, organic etiologic explanations, and medical (also behavioral) remedies. The latter studied the psychic phenomena in detail, tried to understand the link between symptoms, settled explanatory hypotheses about the individual, familial, experiential and situational factors leading to eating disturbances, and illustrated various strategies of "moral", behavioral, and psychological treatment. Within the psychopathological approach there were at least three stances, based on the main nosographical constructs operating as "psychopathological attractors": Hysteria

Following the death of 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen who committed suicide after forced “conversion therapy,” President Barack Obama called for a nationwide ban on psychotherapy aimed at changing sexual orientation or gender identity. The administration argued that because conversion therapy causes substantial psychological harm to minors, it is neither medically nor ethically appropriate. We fully agree with the President and believe that this is a step in the right direction. Of course, in addition to being unsafe as well as ethically unsound, current conversion therapy approaches aren’t actually effective at doing what they claim to do – changing sexual orientation. But we also worry that this may be a short-term legislative solution to what is really a conceptual problem. The question we ought to be asking is “what will happen if and when scientists do end up developing safe and effective technologies that can alter sexual orientation?”

Louis Charland’s claim that DSM Cluster B personality disorders are moral rather than clinical kinds has recently triggered a lively debate. In order to deliver a reliable report of the latter, both (1) Charland’s arguments concerning the impossibility of identifying and treating personality disorders without applying a morally laden conceptual framework and (2) some critical responses they provoked are discussed. Then, in turn, the conceptual history of the notion of personality disorder is traced, including not only well-recognized contributions from (3) medical psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and DSM nosology, but also (4) an important, but often neglected, tradition of virtue and moral character. Finally, (5) the idea of a normatively neutral concept of personality disorder is scrutinized in the context of its logical dependence on the fact-value distinction. The latter dichotomy’s recent criticism, in particular, is employed to support Charland’s argument and to suggest that the normative character of personality disorders may go much deeper than this or that DSM formulation.

This biographical book originates as part of a broader research program on the history of medicine in Nazi Germany and the social context of the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trials of 1947, as well as questions on the forced migration of Jewish physicians in the 1930s and 1940s that Paul Weindling, the Welcome Trust Research Professor at the Oxford Centre for Health, Medicine, and Society, has pursued over the past decades. His scholarship has already been reflected in substantial monographic publications, including "Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism" (1989) and "Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials: From Medical Warcrimes to Informed Consent" (2004). These books have examined major themes including human experimentation in the context of racial anthropology and eugenics ideas, as well as the development of the concept of “informed consent” during the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial that pursued medical misconduct during the Second World War and the crimes against humanity committed by Nazi physicians.

Early in the twentieth century, Russia was experiencing a decadent period of cultural degeneration just as science was developing ways to identify medical conditions which supposedly reflected the health of the entire nation. Leonid Andreev, the leading literary figure of his time, stepped into the breach of this scientific discourse with literary works about degenerates. The spirited social debates on mental illness, morality and sexual deviance which resulted from these works became part of the ongoing battle over the definition and depiction of the irrational, complicated by Andreev’s own publicised bouts with neurasthenia.

This book examines the concept of pathology in Russia, the influence of European medical discourse, the development of Russian psychiatry, and the role that it had in popular culture, by investigating the life and works of Andreev. It engages the emergence of psychiatry and the role that art played in the development of this objective science.

Au vu de l’augmentation des internements et des soins sans consentement, il semble nécessaire de repenser les cadres de notre prise en charge psychiatrique. À cet égard, l’histoire nous rappelle le rôle central de la famille et de la communauté dans l’accueil de ces malades et signale l’importance qu’il y a à les soutenir, à les accompagner et, surtout, à y ancrer la prise en charge psychiatrique de demain.

24 octobre 1871, 3 heures du matin, maison de santé d’Evere. Laurent Dumoulin, interné la veille dans cet établissement destiné à l’accueil de ceux que l’on dit alors « aliénés », est pris d’un accès de fureur. Se sentant menacé par ses compagnons de chambrée, il terrasse deux de ceux-ci, qui trouvent la mort sous ses coups. Les conséquences dramatiques de cette rixe mènent à l’ouverture d’une instruction judiciaire, qui met en évidence une longue série de défaillances dans la gestion de l’asile.
Au fil de cet ouvrage, l’histoire de la maison de santé d’Evere est retracée, depuis ses débuts exemplaires peu de temps après la promulgation, en 1850, de la première loi belge en matière de prise en charge des aliénés, jusqu’aux poursuites. Un instantané de l’asile est reconstitué au moyen du volumineux dossier judiciaire de ce que l’on a rapidement nommé « l’affaire d’Evere » ainsi que d’autres sources, parmi lesquelles les archives de l’établissement. Une place importante est laissée aux témoignages, qui offrent un éclairage brut sur ce que pouvait être le quotidien dans cette institution au début des années 1870. Ce que révèle l’enquête, largement médiatisée, émeut profondément l’opinion. L’affaire fait scandale et la seule réponse judiciaire apparaît tout à fait insuffisante. Les médecins aliénistes saisissent l’occasion pour faire valoir des revendications qu’ils portent depuis quelque temps déjà et auxquelles les abus constatés à Evere semblent donner raison. L’aile progressiste du parti libéral tente quant à elle d’imposer une réforme ambitieuse, qui aurait pour effet de responsabiliser davantage l’État belge dans la prise en charge des aliénés. Depuis le procès de l’affaire jusqu’à la promulgation de la nouvelle loi en 1873, ce sont donc aussi les multiples réactions provoquées par le scandale qui sont envisagées.

Objekte wie Zwangsjacken, Gitterbetten und Fixiergurte prägen bis heute unsere Vorstellungen von psychiatrischen Einrichtungen und ihrer Geschichte. Es sind wirkmächtige Objekte, die oft stellvertretend für den historischen Ort der Psychiatrie und den Umgang mit Menschen an diesem Ort stehen. Doch was wissen wir tatsächlich über das " soziale Leben " dieser und auch weniger herausragender Objekte im Alltag psychiatrischer Institutionen sowie allgemein über die materiellen Kulturen der Psychiatrie? Dieser Frage geht die Tagung " Materielle Kulturen der Psychiatrie " mit Vorträgen, künstlerischen Interventionen, Performances und einer Ausstellungsinstallation nach. 17:30 B e g r ü ß u n g u n d E i n f ü h r u n g Monika Ankele / Benoît Majerus, Materielle Kulturen der Psychiatrie

Benjamin Rush is considered by many as the father of American Psychiatry. In his book he presents a complex taxonomy of mental disorders where many criteria (including severity, course and causality) apart from the kind of symptoms shape the classification. In this paper his ideas on mania are presented. It is a strictly medical approach, with an emphasis on somatic symptoms which is incommensurable to current psychopathology. It appears clearly that at the beginning of the Nineteenth-Century American psychiatry was deeply influenced by European descriptions. As the reader can see at that time mania was a wide concept including many symptoms which were later severed in different diagnoses. On this respect, in Rush’s mania there is no sign of the distinction between affective and cognitive illnesses, a distinction that had to characterize the end of the century and (thanks to Kraepelin) had to inform Twentieth-Century nosologies. In this paper, the concept of agitation is enlarged to include many phenomena that current classifications would consider as part of schizophrenia. However, the current tendency to enlarge the concept of bipolarity in order to include so many forms of agitation and excitation spread a new light on this old book evoking the return of an old, pre-Kraepelinian stance.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el problema del hipnotismo en la ciencia
y la cultura de Buenos Aires durante el último cuarto del siglo xix. Desde el momento en
que la medicina argentina comenzó a interesarse teórica y prácticamente por la hipnosis,
se vio enfrentada a una multiplicidad de actores (espiritistas, ilusionistas, curanderos) que
también hacían uso, con fines divergentes, de ese instrumento. En este texto se coloca
el énfasis en la descripción de las tensiones y disputas sostenidas entre los médicos y
sus competidores. Además de rastrear los profesionales que aportaron al estudio de la
nueva terapia, se señalan las estrategias llevadas a cabo por los representantes de la ciencia
oficial para acabar con otro tipo de utilizaciones del sonambulismo artificial.

[AMAZON LINK BELOW TO BOOK ITSELF -- TOC and book intro in downloadable .pdf] 

"It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it." --John Steinbeck Scientific research confirms what people have always known: answers, ideas, and inspiration do come to us in dreams. Harvard psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., offers this rich collection of examples of how the world's most creative practitioners in art, music, film, science, literature and other fields have used the revelations of their dream life to inform their work. Dr. Barrett offers insights showing us how to encourage lucid, meaningful dreaming, and how to apply the meanings of our dreams to solving problems--from the everyday to the extraordinary. This is the stuff dreams are made of. In the visual arts, Jasper Johns couldn't find his unique artistic vision until he dreamed it in the form of a large American flag. Salvador Dali and his colleagues built the startling new genre of surrealism out of dreams. Kubla Kahn dreamed the design for his stately pleasure dome; thousands of years later, Lucy Davis, chief architect at a major firm, continues the tradition of dreaming designs into life in her extraordinary buildings. Film is a fertile avenue for dreams: "Twice I have transferred dreams to film exactly as I had dreamed them," confides director Ingmar Bergman, as have Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and John Sayles. From Mary Shelley's terrible nightmare, which became Frankenstein, to Stephen King's haunting dream as a little boy, which led to his first bestseller, countless writers have consulted the Committee. Musicians from Beethoven to Billy Joel and Paul McCartney have whistled the Committee's tunes. In science, physiologist Otto Loewi dreamed the medical experiment that earned him the Nobel Prize. In sports, Marion Jones dreamed she'd broken a world record, then brought the dream to life. Gandhi translated his dream of resistance into a movement that changed the world. Since Freud, we take it for granted that our dreams reflect our past. In The Committee of Sleep, Barrett reveals how dreams can also tell us about our future potential--and how to reach it.

Quella di Asperger è una delle sindromi più celebri della storia della psichiatria novecentesca. Il suo successo è stato tale da oltrepassare i confini della clinica, tanto da essere oggi nota presso il grande pubblico come una variante dello "spettro autistico". Molto meno conosciuta è la vicenda di Hans Asperger, medico, cattolico e convinto uomo di destra, che formulò la diagnosi di «psicopatia autistica» per descrivere quei bambini con un profilo comportamentale caratteristico, in cui l'autismo era presente senza associarsi a ritardo mentale marcato. Il libro di Sheffer ricostruisce la sua storia di medico e il contributo offerto alle politiche eugenetiche naziste.