'Robert Schumann's mental illnesses. (Genius and madness)', by Mlle Dr Pascal (1908a)
Dr Constance Pascal’s study of Robert Schumann’s mental illnesses, dating from the early years of the twentieth century, reflects contemporary theories on the relations between gifted individuals and mental illness: the genius vs. madness debate. Pascal’s reading of Schumann’s musical career, in conjunction with his mental profile, offers a sympathetic and nuanced overview of the composer and a critical perspective on extant theories of his illness. (Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Gordon, F. Tags: Classic Text No. 103 Source Type: research
German wine in an American bottle: the spread of modern psychiatry in China, 1898-1949
Modern psychiatry was first introduced to mainland China around 1900 by Western missionaries. By 1949 the field had developed gradually as a result of contact with Western psychiatry and especially its American practitioners. This paper analyses the role played by key individuals and events in this process in the years prior to 1949. It argues that modern psychiatry was introduced to China through a process of cultural adaptation in which the USA served as a bridge for German thought. (Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Li, W., Schmiedebach, H.-P. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
'Without decontextualisation': the Stanley Royd Museum and the progressive history of mental health care
This paper builds on recent scholarship exploring museum exhibitions and the heritage of mental health care. Using the development of the Stanley Royd Museum in the mid-1970s as a case study, the paper will examine the rationale for the opening of the museum and its link to changing perceptions of mental hospitals in both historical study and what was then ‘current’ practice. It will then provide an overview of the proposed audience for the new museum and briefly analyse its success in communicating its history to its visitors. Ultimately, it will question how successful mental health professionals were in pres...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Ellis, R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Kynanthropy: canine madness in Byzantine late antiquity
Those afflicted bark like dogs, scramble on all fours and loiter around graveyards – canine madness, referred to as kynanthropy, was an illness concept in its own right in the medicine of late antiquity. At roughly the same time as the medical description produced by Aëtius of Amida, the Syrian chronicler John of Ephesus, also from Amida, reported an epidemic of dog-like madness sweeping his home town in ad 560. The symptoms are identical and both authors are from Amida – what is the connection between the two depictions? In addition to the history of the medical concept, the example of the canine madness ...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Metzger, N. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Winifred Rushforth and the Davidson Clinic for Medical Psychotherapy: a case study in the overlap of psychotherapy, Christianity and New Age spirituality
The activities of both Winifred Rushforth (1885–1983), and the Edinburgh-based Davidson Clinic for Medical Psychotherapy (1941–73) which she directed, exemplify and elaborate the overlap in Scotland of religious discourses and practices with psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Even as post-war secularization began to affect Scottish culture and society, Rushforth and the Davidson Clinic attempted to renew the biographical discourses of Christianity using the idioms and practices of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Furthermore, alongside these Christian-inflected activities, Rushforth promoted a psychoanalytically-inform...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Miller, G. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
'S.W.' and C.G. Jung: mediumship, psychiatry and serial exemplarity
On the basis of unpublished materials, this essay reconstructs Jung’s seances with his cousin, Helene Preiswerk, which formed the basis of his 1902 medical dissertation, The Psychology and Pathology of so-called Occult Phenomena. It separates out Jung’s contemporaneous approach to the mediumistic phenomena she exhibited from his subsequent sceptical psychological reworking of the case. It traces the reception of the work and its significance for his own self-experimentation from 1913 onwards. Finally, it reconstructs the manner in which Jung continually returned to his first model and reframed it as an exemplar...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Shamdasani, S. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
'A vehicle of symbols and nothing more'. George Romanes, theory of mind, information, and Samuel Butler
Today’s ‘theory of mind’ (ToM) concept is rooted in the distinction of nineteenth-century philosopher William Clifford between ‘objects’ that can be directly perceived and ‘ejects’, such as the mind of another person, which are inferred from one’s subjective knowledge of one’s own mind. George Romanes, a founder with Charles Darwin of the discipline of comparative psychology, considered the minds of animals as ejects, an idea that could be generalized to ‘society as eject’ and, ultimately, ‘the world as an eject’ – mind in the universe. Yet...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Forsdyke, D. R. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
The epistemological significance of possession entering the DSM
The discourse of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM reflects the inherently dialogic or contradictory nature of its stated mandate to demonstrate both ‘nosological completeness’ and cultural ‘inclusiveness’. Psychiatry employs the dialogic discourse of the DSM in a one-sided, positivistic manner by identifying what it considers universal mental disease entities stripped of their cultural context. In 1992 the editors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders proposed to introduce possession into their revisions. A survey of the discussions about introducing ‘pos...
Source: History of Psychiatry - August 7, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Stephenson, C. Tags: Articles Source Type: research
Research on the history of psychiatry: Dissertation Abstracts
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Tags: Research on the history of psychiatry Source Type: research
Book Review: David Cantor and Edmund Ramsden (eds), Stress, Shock and Adaptation in the Twentieth Century
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Jones, E. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Kate Schechter, Illusions of a Future - Psychoanalysis and the Biopolitics of Desire
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Danto, E. A. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Howard Chiang (ed.), Psychiatry and Chinese History
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Baum, E. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Francesca Scott, Kate Scarth and Ji Won Chung (eds), Picturing Women's Health
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Edwards, S. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
Book Review: Paul Bishop, Carl Jung
(Source: History of Psychiatry)
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Domenici, G. Tags: Book Reviews Source Type: research
'The meaning of the symptom in psychiatry. An overview', by Hans W. Gruhle (1913)
At the beginning of the 20th century there took place in German Psychiatry an important debate on the nature and relative importance of mental symptoms and diseases. Young psychiatrists such as Störring, Ziehen, Gaupp, Hoche, Jaspers and Gruhle challenged, from various perspectives, the nosology of established figures such as Kraepelin and Wernicke. The Classic Text is a commented translation of Gruhle’s 1913 lecture on the meaning of mental symptoms. After concluding that mental symptoms should be used as the epistemological unit of analysis in psychiatry, Gruhle rued the fact that little was yet known about th...
Source: History of Psychiatry - May 28, 2015 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Schioldann, J., Berrios, G. Tags: Classic Text No. 102 Source Type: research
