Abstract
For both contemporaneous commentators and historians, psychiatry within what was Communist Europe has largely been discussed through the prism of politics and ideology. Recently, scholars have begun to debate the extent to which psychiatric practices within post-WWII Eastern Europe were beholden to the ideological aspirations of the political elite. This paper enters into these debates by suggesting the need for more nuance in how historians analyse the relationship between ideology and psychiatry in this context. Specifically, it argues that there is a need to differentiate between psychiatric practices that were socialist by design—where professional knowledge was theoretically guided by ideological considerations—and those that were socialist by default—where practices were shaped by the socialist context without being meaningfully inspired by ideology. In order to demonstrate these distinctions, this paper reflects upon psychiatric developments within Communist Yugoslavia (1945–1991). By drawing a clearer distinction between “socialist by design” and “socialism by default”, it becomes easier to reconnect Eastern Europe to the broader historiography of twentieth century psychiatry, while simultaneously providing new insights into the experience of state-sponsored Communism.
Highlights
During the Cold War, articles about “socialist psychiatry” punctuated Western medical journals, usually in the form of dispatches from Western mental health care workers who had engaged in short exploratory trips to East European psychiatric facilities (e.g., Aronson and Field, 1964; Field and Aronson, 1965; Ziferstein, 1966; Moss, 1967; Hess, 1971; Allen, 1973; Salvendy, 1975)
This paper aims to complicate the debate somewhat by encouraging scholars to consider a particular nuance in our conceptualisation of “socialist psychiatry.”
While it is worthwhile to differentiate whether psychiatry was socialist by design or by default, it is not always possible to disentangle one from the other
Summary
During the Cold War, articles about “socialist psychiatry” punctuated Western medical journals, usually in the form of dispatches from Western mental health care workers who had engaged in short exploratory trips to East European psychiatric facilities (e.g., Aronson and Field, 1964; Field and Aronson, 1965; Ziferstein, 1966; Moss, 1967; Hess, 1971; Allen, 1973; Salvendy, 1975). While the authors might touch on subjects such as hospital planning and the availability of Western medical literature, they included detailed impressions of life beyond the Iron Curtain, with reference to how” typical citizens” dressed, spoke, and behaved These sorts of details were both an indication of, and perhaps inadvertently a contributor to, the climate of Cold War rivalry. Some reports (Kline, 1960, 1963) attempted to downplay the differences between East and West, many seemed to reflect a belief that East European citizens and practitioners were psychologically distinct from their Western counterparts, living within a system where the state’s ideological devotion to socialism demanded conformity from its citizenry From this perspective, the role of the East European psychiatrist was to ensure that patients could continue to fulfil their duties to the collective by adhering to the ideological dictates of the state. East European practitioners were typically framed as engaging in a socialist variant of psychiatry in their attempts to treat socialist citizens
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