Posts Tagged ‘ historiography ’

The History of Madness and Psychiatry at the History of Science Society Conference (3-6 November 2011)

The Annual History of Science Society (HSS) Conference meets in Cleveland, Ohio 3-6 November 2011.  This year, the meeting is co-located with the annual conferences of two other important science and technology studies organizations:  The Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).

For those historians of psychiatry and mental health attending, there will be a number of panels that may be of interest.  The editors of H-Madness, for instance, will be discussing new perspectives on the history of madness and mental illness in the modern world.  Other panels will discuss topics covering, among others, emotional disorders in East Asia, the classification of people, globalization, nightmares, and sexuality.

Also noteworthy, co-editor of H-Madness Elizabeth Lunbeck will be giving the annual distinguished lecture before the Forum for the History of Human Sciences on Saturday.  Her talk is entitled “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Power: Charisma, Fascination, and Narcissism.”

Finally, the editors of H-Madness will be meeting to discuss ways of enhancing and refining the website, in order to make it a more useful and effective resource for scholars and the general public.  We would therefore also welcome hearing from any of you who will be in attendance at the conference.  If you would like to meet with one or more of the editors during the conference, we invite you to contact either Benoit Majerus (email: benoit.majerus@uni.lu) or Greg Eghigian (email: gae2@psu.edu).

Panels Being Held at the Upcoming HSS Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, 3-6 November 2011

New Perspectives in the Modern History of Madness and Psychiatry

Chair and Commentator: Greg Eghigian, Pennsylvania State University

1. The Material Culture of Asylums, Benoit Majerus, Université du Luxembourg

2. Whither Narcissism? Types and Traits in the History of the Personality Disorders, Elizabeth Lunbeck, Vanderbilt University

3. New Perspectives in the History of Forensic Psychiatry, Eric Engstrom, Humboldt-

Universität

4. Psychiatry and the Visual Turn, Andreas Killen, CUNY

Locating Emotions in the Body: Transnational Perspectives on the Treatment of Emotional Disorders in East Asian Medicine (Session sponsored by FHSAsia, the Forum for the History of Science in Asia)

Chair: Volker Scheid, University of Westminster

1. Cosmological, Fragile, and Disembodied: Towards an Historical Epistemology of

Chinese Medicine in Late Imperial and Contemporary China, Volker Scheid, University of Westminster

2. All Diseases Arise from the Liver: An Historical Epistemology of the Treatment of

Emotional Disorders in Kampo Medicine, Keiko Daidoji, University of Westminster

3. The Excitations and Suppressions of the Times: Locating Emotional Disorders in the Liver in Modern Chinese Medicine, *Eric Karchmer, University of Westminster

4. Fire-Illness: Globalized Psychiatry, Nationalized History, and the Korean Effort to Make the Local Visible, Soyoung Suh, Dartmouth College

Classifying People

Chair: Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Yale University

1. Japanese Internment and the Science of Governing Dependent Peoples: Social Context and Scientific Truth, Karin Rosemblatt, University of Maryland and Leandro Benmergui, University of Maryland

2. The Monkey in the Panopticon: David Ferrier’s Utilitarian Neurology, Cathy Gere, University of California, San Diego

3. The Psychologist and the Bombardier: The Army Air Force Classification Program in WWII, Marcia Holmes, University of Chicago

4. The First German Genetics Institute 1914- 1930: A ‘Damenstift’ (Foundation for Noble Nuns), Ida Stamhuis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Treatment, Sex, and Discovery

Chair: Luis Campos, Drew University

1. Protection Against Nightmares: Talismans and Ritual Exorcist Techniques in Late

Ming Encyclopedia Forest of Dreams, Brigid E. Vance, Princeton University

2. ‘Can There Be a Science of Bibliotherapy?’: Reading as Treatment in United States Hospitals, 1935-1940, Monique Dufour, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

3. The Science and Transformation of Sex in Republican China, Howard H. Chiang, Princeton University

4. The Parallel Lives of Two Viruses: Their Discovery and Reception, Neeraja Sankaran, Yonsei University, South Korea

2011
10/21
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Hugh Freeman, 1930-2011

HUGH FREEMAN, 1930-2011

Obituaries have just been published of the psychiatrist and historian, Hugh Freeman, who died on the 4th May at the age of 81.

Freeman will probably be best known to list members as one of the founders of the journal, History of Psychiatry and the editor of a number of essay collections on the history of psychiatry in Britain.  These include the two volume, 150 Years of British Psychiatry (London: Gaskell/Athlone, 1991 and 1996) edited with German Berrios;  A Century of Psychiatry, (London: Mosby-Wolfe, 1999),  and Psychiatric Cultures Compared: Psychiatry and Mental Health Care in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005) edited with Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Harry Oosterhuis and Joost Vijselaar.

After retiring as consultant psychiatrist to Salford Health Authority, Freeman was engaged in large scale history of psychiatric policy in post war Britain under the supervision of John Pickstone.  Parts of this work have been published including:

‘Mental Health: Policy and Practice in the NHS’, Journal of Mental Health 7.3 (1998): 225-39.

‘Mental Health Services in an English County Borough before 1974′, Medical History 28 (1984): 111-28.

The Times obituary was published on the 16 June but is only available to subscribers.  The Guardian obituary is open access here.

Dr Rhodri Hayward

School of History

Queen Mary, University of London

LONDON E1 4NS

r.hayward@qmul.ac.uk

http://www.qmul.ac.uk/emotions

2011
06/23
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The History of Health Insurance and Mental Illness

The historical branches of German social insurance

The successful passage of health insurance reform legislation in the United States moves me to wonder about the extent to which scholars have looked into the role of health insurance in mental health care.  About ten years ago, a number of us historians examined the impact of mental illness on social insurance in Germany around the years 1880-1930.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the rise of shellshock in World War I and the killing of 200,000 psychiatric patients by the Nazis under their T-4 program provided the backdrop and inspiration for much of this research.   In my own study of disability within early German social insurance (Making Security Social), I found that providing health care benefits to those suffering from work-related nervous illnesses prompted a vocal, organized, and persistent backlash from those who contended that the system was only rewarding malingering.  The fact that some claimants contended that their nervous symptoms were caused, not by a factory accident, but rather by the torturous process of applying for a pension itself only seemed to confirm the view that social insurance and mental illness did not mix well.   In fact by the 1920s and 1930s, “pension neuroses” – as they were called – were publicly pilloried by conservatives, liberals, and the Nazis as emblematic of a social insurance system that bred whining and undermined productivity and masculinity.  Interestingly enough, however, the Nazis found it politically impossible to dismantle the social insurance system, despite the fact that many reformers in their party wished to do so.  So, there is certainly historical evidence indicating that, indeed, insurance systems do create new constituencies that provide powerful support for the system’s continuation.

So, I have some questions for others.  Are there good historical studies out there (articles or monographs) which examine insurance’s impact on mental illness and mental health and vice versa?  What role has health insurance played in reinforcing or undermining professional, institutional, and social trends and practices?  For instance, to what extent was social insurance responsible for the post-World War II boom in psychotherapeutic professionals and services?  What role have pharmaceutical companies played in health insurance systems affecting mental health across the globe?  What effects did health insurance schemes have on the process widely known as deinstitutionalization?  Please post any responses on the blog.

GE

2010
03/23
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