Book Review: Andrew Scull, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity From the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Thomson, M. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
The 'Preliminary Discourse' to Methodical Nosology, by Francois Boissier de Sauvages (1772)
The eighteenth century witnessed an intense drive to classify diseases as natural kinds. Together with Linné, Macbride, Cullen, Sagar and Vogel, Francois Boissier de Sauvages, Professor of Medicine at Montpellier, was an important player in this process. In his monumental Nosologie Méthodique, Sauvages based his nosological system on the more botanico view proposed by Thomas Sydenham, namely, that human diseases (including mental ailments) should be classified in the same way as were plants. Classic Text No. 104 is an abridged translation of the Preliminary Discourse to the Nosologie Méthodique. (Sourc...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Starkstein, S., Berrios, G. Tags: Classic Text No. 104 Source Type: research
The creator of the term 'anancasm' was Hungarian: Guyla Donath (1849-1944)
This article seeks to clarify that the term was coined by the Hungarian psychiatrist Gyula Donáth, who was born in Baja, on the Danube, and worked mainly in Budapest. Donáth’s publications reveal that his predominant sphere of interest and research was neurology and psychiatry. A number of his publications deal with epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorders. After a period of intensive research, during which he spent some time in Berlin at the clinic of neuroscientist Carl Westphal, Donáth proposed the term ‘anancasm’ in 1895 to describe compulsive mental processes. (Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Steinberg, H. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Epistemological issues in the history of Italian psychiatry: the contribution of Gaetano Perusini (1879-1915)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian psychiatry was characterized by its emphasis on an organic explanation of mental illness. ‘Cerebral mythology’ was a major influence in Italy, at least until the second half of the twentieth century, often at the expense of the development of psychology. In this context, a few psychiatrists adopted a different epistemological perspective, based on a more ‘integrative’ view of their discipline. In particular, Gaetano Perusini stands out. He promoted the concept of psychiatry as a science which embraced many different fields, thus emphasizi...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Passione, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The multiaxial assessment and the DSM-III: a conceptual analysis
In conclusion I will discuss different critiques of the concept. (Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Bronschtein, E. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
'A Berlin psychiatrist with an American passport': Lothar Kalinowsky, electroconvulsive therapy and international exchange in the mid-twentieth century
The emigration of Lothar Kalinowsky (1899–1992) might, at first glance, seem to be a history of coincidence and twists of fate, but it is shown to be a truly entangled and intertwined history and story. The international introduction of electroconvulsive therapy was not only closely involved with the political, scientific and economic conditions during World War II, but the story of Kalinowsky’s relevance to it emerges from competing stories, told differently in Europe and the USA – and by Kalinowsky himself. Tracing these stories up to the end of the 1960s reveals Kalinowsky as an influential inheritor a...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Rzesnitzek, L. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Leon Marillier and the veridical hallucination in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century French psychology and psychopathology
Recent research on the professionalization of psychology at the end of the nineteenth century shows how objects of knowledge which appear illegitimate to us today shaped the institutionalization of disciplines. The veridical or telepathic hallucination was one of these objects, constituting a field both of division and exchange between nascent psychology and disciplines known as ‘psychic sciences’ in France, and ‘psychical research’ in the Anglo-American context. In France, Leon Marillier (1862–1901) was the main protagonist in discussions concerning the concept of the veridical hallucination,...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Le Malefan, P., Sommer, A. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The nature of delusion: psychologically explicable? psychologically inexplicable? philosophically explicable? Part 1
The debate about the nature of delusion has rumbled on for over a century without resolution. The current situation is a stand-off between psychologists, who propose various theories as to the psychological explicability of delusion, and psychiatrists, who generally regard delusion as inexplicable. Our main aim in this 2-part article is to reprise the intellectual atmosphere of German psychopathology in the inter-war and immediate post-war years, when the issues concerning delusion were formulated with more sensitivity to the actual delusions encountered in clinical practice. In Part 1 we mount a critique of psychological ...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Cutting, J., Musalek, M. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Felix Voisin and the genesis of abnormals
This article traces the genealogy of the category of ‘abnormals’ in psychiatry. It focuses on the French alienist Felix Voisin (1794–1872) who played a decisive role in the creation of alienist knowledge and institutions for problem children, criminals, idiots and lunatics. After a presentation of the category of ‘abnormals’ as understood at the end of the nineteenth century, I identify in the works of Voisin a key moment in the concept’s evolution. I show how, based on concepts borrowed from phrenology and applied first to idiocy, Voisin allows alienism to establish links between the me...
Source: History of Psychiatry - November 16, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Doron, C.-O. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Dissertation Abstracts
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Research on the History of psychiatry Source Type: research
Book Review: Tiffany Fawn Jones, Psychiatry, Mental Institutions, and the Mad in Apartheid South Africa
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Coleborne, C. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Wilfred Attenborough, Churchill and the 'Black Dog' of Depression: Reassessing the Biographical Evidence of Psychological Disorder
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Toye, R. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Hans-Walter Schmuhl and Volker Roelcke (eds), "Heroische Therapien". Die deutsche Psychiatrie im internationalen Vergleich 1918-1945
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Nolte, K. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Louise Hide, Gender and Class in English Asylums, 1890-1914
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Farquharson, J. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Jens Grundler, Armut und Wahnsinn. "Arme Irre" und ihre Familien im Spannungsfeld von Psychiatrie und Armenfursorge in Glasgow, 1875-1921
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Nolte, K. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
