History of Psychiatry

This study illustrates the impact on forensic psychiatric investigations (FPI) of time-specific scientific theories and moral normative considerations. A comparative historical perspective illustrates historical FPI procedures (i.e. methodology and focus), based on two matched FPI case reports from the 1930s: a man and a woman who had shot their respective spouses. First, in the analysis, a comparison was made between the two cases regarding assessment procedure and focus, applying a gender perspective, and second, stability and change in FPI praxis between the 1930s and the 2020s were identified...

Drawing on Heidegger's method of analysis, the question of what is psychiatry is explored from within . This leads to a conception of psychiatry as a form of interpersonal interaction in which there is a specific reaching out of one Being to another. It is a 'specific reaching out' because, following the recognition through the interaction between Beings that the other is in some form of distress, there is the corresponding need to assuage. The reformulation of psychiatry in this sense is important because it emphasises the unity with which we communicate and interact, and it also serves as a reminder of the need in psychiatry to develop novel methods to undertake research in this complex and constantly evolving field...

James Lucett, a London clerk, claimed possession of a secret remedy for curing chronic insanity. In 1813, he and the Irish surgeon Charles Delahoyde secured royal and aristocratic patronage to implement their 'process' and opened a private asylum. They aroused great public interest after apparently remarkable results with hitherto intractable patients from Bethlem and Hoxton. Delahoyde and Lucett attained brief celebrity, but within a year it was evident that the dramatic recoveries were only temporary. Their venture collapsed in disarray and bankruptcy, and the episode was soon largely forgotten...

Recent historiography has revealed a growing interest in the developments of psychiatric epidemiology. This volume aims to explicitly tackle the problem of transforming a diversity of knowledge into a structured scientific unit. Furthermore, it aims to answer this by bringing together historical studies that demonstrate how epistemic authority has led to the hierarchization of knowledge and the institutionalization of psychiatric epidemiology. Interdisciplinary research teams are traced back in history, and their organization is interrogated...

A new psychiatric institution emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the psychopathic hospital. This institution represented a significant development in the history of psychiatry, as it marked the profession's reorientation from asylum-based to hospital-based care, and in this way presaged the deinstitutionalization movement that would begin half a century later. Psychopathic hospitals were also an important marker of psychiatry's efforts to redefine its professional boundaries and respond to its vociferous critics...

Originally put forward to defend history from the encroachment of physics, the distinction between understanding and explanation was built into the foundations of Karl Jaspers' 'phenomenological' psychiatry, and it is revised, used and defended by many still working in that tradition. On the face of it, this is rather curious. I examine what this notion of 'understanding' amounts to, why it entered and remains influential in psychiatry, and what insights for contemporary psychiatry are buried in the notion...

Danilo Cargnello was one of the greatest authors of Italian phenomenological psychopathology. He wrote the first articles on the subject in 1947-8, a period in which phenomenological ideas began to spread in Italy. His main contribution was to introduce and disseminate Binswanger's ideas in Italy and to emphasise the anthropological character of Daseinsanalyse . His book analysing results of experimental psychosis constitutes one of the most important and meticulous psychopathological reports of substance-induced psychosis...

This paper examines the psychiatric work villages in Israel, which have so far had little historiographic attention. In the 1950s and 1960s, four work villages were established for people with psychiatric disabilities. They were intended to create a long-term rehabilitative alternative to the common hospitalization practice. These villages were organized around employment in various branches of farming and also offered recreational and cultural activities to alleviate the patients' loneliness and to create a community life...

The roots of the recent controversy about how mental health professionals should respond to gender non-conforming children are traced. To make historical sense, this paper distinguishes between epistemological (discursive) and ontological (non-discursive) aspects and describes their features, since 1970. This helps to clarify some of the confusions at the centre of the still heated debate about sexuality and gender identity today. In the concluding discussion, the philosophical resource of critical realism is used to interpret the historical narrative provided...

The institutional organization of psychiatry in Poland when it became independent faced the problem of the integration of three ex-partition territories having different laws, health-care systems and psychiatric cultures. Due to the high incidence of mental health problems, among which psychosis was the most frequent, psychiatric care facilities had to be organized as quickly and efficiently as possible and had to address the issue of psychosis both conceptually and practically. This study investigates the concept of psychosis and methods of its treatment in inter-war Polish psychiatric care facilities in relation to the sociocultural context of the institutional organization of psychiatry in Poland and the influence of major European concepts and treatment practices regarding psychoses...

In his article 'On the question of unitary psychosis' (1926), Harry Marcuse (1876-1931) undertook a thought experiment in which he challenged clinical psychiatrists to entertain the possibility that the concept of unitary psychosis could be a useful diagnostic and nosological tool. Drawing on the psychology of Friedrich Jodl (1849-1914) and contemporary notions of energeticism, Marcuse proposed a non-empirical, 'analytic' method of overcoming growing dissatisfaction with Kraepelinian categories in the 1910s and 1920s...

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) of London was founded in 1882 with the purpose of investigating psychical phenomena, especially the theme of survival, with scientific rigour. Despite the recognized importance of the SPR for dynamic psychiatry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are few studies of its epistemological contributions to the theme of survival and its implications to science. In order to fill this gap, we have consulted the main journals of the SPR in its golden period, and highlight the epistemologies of Sidgwick, Myers, James, Podmore, Schiller, Lodge and Richet...

Serious and realistic research into the inheritance of the psychoses started in earnest at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was encouraged by both the acceptance of the Kraepelinian classification and the rediscovery of the Mendelian model of inheritance. The application of Mendelian rules to the very complex genetics of the psychoses led to agonizing debate. The Classic Text is a translation of the introduction of the doctoral thesis of Jens Chr. Smith, a little-known Danish psychiatrist who was able to summarize, with the enthusiasm typical to his youth and with surprising accuracy, the early stages of the debate mentioned above...

Psychopathology has been criticized for decades for its reliance on a brain-centred and over-reductionist approach which views mental disorders as disease-like natural kinds. While criticisms of brain-centred psychopathologies abound, these criticisms sometimes ignore important advances in the neurosciences which view the brain as embodied, embedded, extended and enactive, and as fundamentally plastic. A new onto-epistemology for mental disorders is proposed, focusing on a biocultural model, in which human brains are understood as embodied and embedded in ecosocial niches, and with which individuals enact particular transactions characterized by circular causality...

This study examines attempted suicide in older people between 1870 and 1908 in (NSW), Australia. Statistical Registers of NSW indicate persons aged 60+ had disproportionately high rates of apprehension (10.9%) and conviction (13.0%) for attempted suicide. Newspaper reports of 110 suicide attempts in older people indicate that alcohol misuse, poor health, depression, being tired of living, financial problems, relationship difficulties, loss events and insanity were the main issues. Most were treated compassionately with medical care and support, albeit sometimes in a gaol setting...

The term psychiatry ( Psychiatrie ) was first used in 1800, in the early work of Leipzig Romantic natural philosopher and later neuroanatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach; it was a recherché reference to medical animism. This little-known instance of neologism by a young ambitious author invites a brief lexicological study of psychiatry as a specialty in search of its place among the medical specialties, methods and applications. The European historical lexicology of psychiatry recalls the philosophical commentary tradition on Aristotle's De Anima , eventually ( c ...

George Wallett (1775-1845) is generally known only as Haslam's successor at Bethlem who resigned under the cloud of corruption. However, his life proves to have been more eventful. He trained as a lawyer and doctor, enlisted in the army three times and bottled Malvern's first soda water. After bankruptcy, he managed Pembroke House Asylum as it opened, held two jobs in Bethlem and then operated Surrey House Asylum in Battersea. He moved on to help set up the Suffolk and Dorset asylums, and designed the Leicestershire asylum...

The hybrid constitution of psychiatry carries important implications for understanding the discipline and the legitimacy of its research approaches. One implication concerns the central role of concepts in forming the knowledge base of psychiatry. Because of this, it is vital to explore the structures and interrelationships of concepts through their historical constitution. Using this approach to compare concepts of empathy as articulated by R Vischer, T Lipps and E Stein shows that, despite overlap, the concepts vary in structure, in meaning and in the aspect of reality they capture...

Donald Ewen Cameron is known as the Canadian psychiatrist behind the Montreal Experiments, a series of brainwashing experiments. As part of a larger Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project known as MK Ultra, the CIA regarded these experiments as a potential military weapon during the Cold War. However, a closer look into Cameron's research and project MK Ultra shows that these experiments began long before Cameron was contacted by the CIA. Additionally, Cameron received funding for his experiments indirectly, so he was probably never aware the money was from the CIA...

Expansive autopsychosis, grouped with cycloid psychoses - an illness entity of double origin: (1) Morel's notion degeneracy, reformulated by Magnan and Legrain (reflected in Wimmer's concept: psychogenic psychosis); (2) Wernicke's, Kleist's, Bostroem's (and later Leonhard's) notion of these purportedly independent conditions. Locked in the Danish language, Strömgren and Ostenfeld provided important contributions to this field, exemplified by Ostenfeld's casuistry, translated in this Classic Text.