Models of madness in Victorian asylum practice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4824167 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laurence J Ray (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1981 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 229-264 |
| Publication date | 1981-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-9756 • E-ISSN: 1474-0583 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003975600003714 |
| PMID | 11630885 |
| OpenAlex | W2169566496 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 11 |
During the past few years there has been a rapid growth of interest in the sociological history of psychiatry. Prior to this, the history of psychiatry had been left largely to the psychiatric historian, who tended to proceed, as Thomas Szasz claimed, 'as a socially neutral person, discovering the historical "facts" when in truth, he is a psychiatric propagandist, actively shaping the image of his discipline' (1). Writers such as Michel Foucault, Vieda Skultans, Andrew Scull, David Rothman, Klaus Doerner, and Szasz himself have attempted to underline, as Skultans says, 'the specific uses to which psychiatry has been put in the past, in order to make a more general claim about the nature of psychiatry as such' (2). This aim, however, is not always made fully explicit (3). In this paper it will be argued that psychiatry, viewed as a historically constituted social activity, was characterised by a dualism. It was constituted by a medical or curative model of practice, in that psychiatry developed as a branch of medicine. Yet the 'diseases' which psychiatrists have historically come to regard as part of their field competence are distinguished by at least two criteria: first, their symptoms consist primarily of actions that are highly inappropriate to their social context; secondly, that their etiology is ambiguous. It will be argued here that an ambiguity regarding the etiology of mental disorder, which is often seen as both physically and psychologically caused, was central to psychiatric discourse
Ambiguity · Competence (human resources) · Context (archaeology) · History of psychiatry · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neurology and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Expertise and Causal Attribution in Deciding between Crime and Mental Disorder
The New Poor Law Guardians and the Administration of Insanity in East London, 1834-1844
He Must Die or Go Mad in This Place”
Emaciated, Exhausted, and Excited
The Asylum, the Poor Law, and a Reassessment of the Four-Shilling Grant
Family, community and the Victorian asylum
The Insanity of Place
Madness in Victorian Edinburgh
A quarter century of the history of psychiatry
Mind, Body and Behaviour
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,24 |
| Citation span | 1985 - 2018 (34) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |