Dear H-Madness readers,

The new issue of the History of Psychiatry has been published. Here are the titles and abstracts.

Barbed wire disease: British medical and lay prisoners of war and their perceptions of mental illness arising from captivity, 1939 to 1947 by Gabriel Lawson

Abstract

This article examines medical and lay perceptions of captivity-induced psychopathologies observed among British prisoners of war during the Second World War. Drawing on medical reports, POW memoirs, and camp publications, it explores how both medical and lay observers understood captivity-induced neurotic illness as a collective, environmentally driven disorder rather than an individual pathology. By reintroducing ‘barbed wire disease’ into the historical narrative, this paper challenges trauma-centred interpretations of military psychiatry and highlights the social and environmental dimensions of mental illness in captivity, offering new perspectives on rehabilitation, resilience, and the boundaries between mental health and ill-health.

Between healing and repression: The role of medicine and psychiatry in Hohenschönhausen prison as reconstructed from memories by Felicitas Söhner, Kathleen Haack, Tilman Wickert and Ekkehardt Kumbier

Abstract

This study investigates the role of medical, and in particular psychiatric, care in the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen remand prison, situated within the repressive state security apparatus of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Drawing on 11 oral history interviews with former political prisoners, two physicians in different capacities, and a lawyer, it examines the tensions between the professional mandate of care and the political embedding of medical practice. The central question is how doctors navigated a system that structurally intertwined care and control. The findings reveal a complex and ambivalent picture. Physicians frequently emphasised adherence to professional standards and ethical duties, and some exercised limited autonomy to influence treatment decisions. Yet, detainees describe medical care as intermittently available, often instrumentalised for political purposes, and sometimes experienced as distant or dismissive. Psychiatric interventions were rarely applied solely for therapeutic ends, but rather to maintain detainees’ functional capacity for interrogation and to produce usable expert witness reports. Medical records were systematically communicated to the secret police, effectively suspending confidentiality. Reports of sedation during interrogation further highlight unresolved ethical and practical tensions. Overall, the study demonstrates that medical expertise in this context was both constrained and deployed in ways that reinforced state control, yet individual physicians occasionally exercised agency within these restrictions. By juxtaposing professional self-perceptions with detainees’ experiences, the research contributes to a nuanced historical reassessment of medicine under authoritarian conditions. It underscores the duality of care and coercion, the uneven distribution of agency, and the moral dilemmas faced by medical personnel.

Back to Karl Jaspers’ incomprehensibility of schizophrenia: A longitudinal approach by Valter L. Piedade and Guilherme Messas

Abstract

Schizophrenia has remained from its conception one of psychopathology’s most debated topics. Karl Jaspers’ theorem of its “incomprehensibility” has been particularly influential, often reduced to the impossibility of empathic understanding within the clinical encounter. Contemporary critiques, however, frequently misinterpret Jaspers’ phenomenological framework, overlooking the broader scope of its thought. This paper proposes a reinterpretation of Jaspers’ incomprehensibility theorem by distinguishing three interconnected levels: (1) phenomenological, as closed to empathic understanding; (2) biographical, as a rupture in the continuity of meaning across personal development; and (3) existential, as the impossibility of grasping a person’s Existence. By revisiting these dimensions, we argue for a hermeneutic revaluation of Jaspers’ theorem, highlighting its relevance for contemporary discussions on the longitudinality of psychopathology.

Reel worlds: Reconstructing the history of postwar child psychotherapy through fiction film by Tim Snelson

Abstract

This article uses British drama film No Place for Jennifer (1950) to argue for the evidential value of staged content of real psychotherapeutic places (Institute of Child Psychology) and practices (Margaret Lowenfeld’s World Technique). In the absence of ‘real’ documentary footage, discoveries of recreated therapeutic spaces within largely forgotten genre films can help reconstruct histories of the ‘psy’ sciences whilst offering insight into the contestations specific sites and practices provoked. Employing Baron’s reformulation from ‘documentary’ to ‘archival document’, it demonstrates that content extracted from previously disregarded films can fill archival lacunas whilst expanding both ‘what can be said’ about the past and how it can be said.

Encouraging home care: Family involvement in the care of female mental patients in the Straits Settlements (1900–1930) by Haszira Muhamad Yusof and Azlizan Mat Enh

Abstract

This article examines the changing role of family involvement in caring for female mental patients in the Straits Settlements from the late 19th century to 1930. Using Reports, Medical Department records, and correspondence, it shows how colonial policy gradually shifted responsibility from hospitals to households, especially for women with mild or stabilised illness. What began as a response to overcrowding evolved into efforts to educate families, promote visitation, and build ties. Home routines and activities reframed mental illness from supernatural to medical and domestic terms. Families faced economic strains but became central to recovery and reintegration through care and handicrafts. By 1930, it was extended to the Federated Malay States, reflecting negotiated caregiving shaped by gender norms and kinship.

Book review: Peter Carpenter, Samuel Hitch and the Gloucestershire General Lunatic Asylum by Leonard Smith