The doctoral thesis of Clemens Arthur Ableidinger on the emergence and development of the political field of mental health under Franz Joseph I might be of interest to the readers of Hmadness. Completed at the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, it is freely available on the University’s website.

Here is a summary by the author:

“The project deals with the development of psychiatry as a policy field in the late Habsburg Monarchy. Academization, institutional- as well as legal developments are analyzed as interdependent phenomena. Austria-Hungary’s development into a constitutional monarchy changed the way policy was made, which differed from the era of enlightened-absolutism that preceded it. Cisleithanian federalism led to a rapid expansion of mental asylums that were fashioned as “monuments to the victory of science” by the individual crownlands that created them. Crownland governments considered these new asylums a part of the emerging welfare-state and used them to fashion their politics as “modern” and welfare-oriented. This institutional expansion contrasts with delayed legal developments on the imperial level as well as challenges by an early antipsychiatric movement. The dissertation analyzes both the development of psychiatry as a policy field as well as the activities of individual and cooperative actors, not least which role the emperor Francis Joseph himself played in the field”.