ʿAṣfūriyyeh

A History of Madness, Modernity, and War in the Middle East

Bibliographic Data

ID19990200
AuthorsJoelle M Abi-Rached (0000-0003-2061-9209, corresponding author)
Year2020
Publication date2020-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueʿAṣfūriyyeh (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherThe MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7551/mitpress/12540.001.0001
OpenAlexW4230037135
ISBN9780262361170
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited66

The development of psychiatry in the Middle East, viewed through the history of one of the first modern mental hospitals in the region.ʿAṣfūriyyeh (formally, the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane) was founded by a Swiss Quaker missionary in 1896, one of the first modern psychiatric hospitals in the Middle East. It closed its doors in 1982, a victim of Lebanon's brutal fifteen-year civil war. In this book, Joelle Abi-Rached uses the rise and fall of ʿAṣfūriyyeh as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the sociopolitical history of modern Lebanon. Abi-Rached shows how ʿAṣfūriyyeh's role shifted from a missionary enterprise to a national institution with wide regional influence. She offers a gripping chronicle of patients' and staff members' experiences during the Lebanese civil war and analyzes the hospital's distinctive nonsectarian philosophy. When ʿAṣfūriyyeh closed down, health in general and mental health in particular became more visibly "sectarianized"—monopolized by various religious and political actors. Once hailed for its progressive approach to mental illness and its cosmopolitanism, ʿAṣfūriyyeh became a stigmatizing term, a byword for madness and deviance, ultimately epitomizing a failed project of modernity. Reflecting on the afterlife of this and other medical institutions, especially those affected by war, Abi-Rached calls for a new "ethics of memory," more attuned to our global yet increasingly fragmented, unstable, and violent present.ʿAṣfūriyyeh is the first volume in the MIT Press's new Culture and Psychiatry series

Ancient history · Mental health · Mental illness · Middle East · Modern history · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Spanish Civil War · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Medicine

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