Psychiatrie im 19. Jahrhundert: Forschungen zur Geschichte von psychiatrischen Institutionen, Debatten und Praktiken im deutschen Sprachraum (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Psychiatrie im 19. Jahrhundert: Forschungen zur Geschichte von psychiatrischen Institutionen, Debatten und Praktiken im deutschen Sprachraum Hans-Georg Hofer Eric J. Engstrom and Volker Roelcke , eds. Psychiatrie im 19. Jahrhundert: Forschungen zur Geschichte von psychiatrischen Institutionen, Debatten und Praktiken im deutschen Sprachraum. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Medizinische Forschung, no. 13. Basel: Schwabe, 2003. 294 pp. Sw. Fr. 68.00, €47.50 (paperbound, 3-7965-1933-4). Over recent decades historical research on German psychiatry has concentrated mainly on the Weimar and Nazi periods, while the nineteenth century has remained in the background. However, in recent years there has been increasing interest in "old psychiatry," resulting in a number of completed or ongoing studies. This collection provides an overview of the more recent research on nineteenth-century psychiatry in German-speaking countries. It is a compilation of articles written by historians from Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States, all of whom have worked extensively on various aspects of psychiatry in that period. As indicated in the subtitle and elaborated in the introduction by the editors, this collection is a plea for rewriting and broadening the history of psychiatry as a history of institutions, debates, and practices. Accordingly, the articles are gathered around three main themes: First, some contributors discuss the history of psychiatry in relation to other disciplines and institutions (such as the government or the church). Second, a number of articles show how psychiatrists succeeded in becoming a recognized group of scientific experts; here, the focus is mainly on the making of psychiatry's professional competencies and its ways of producing and validating scientific claims. And third, emphasis is placed on the history of the historiography of psychiatry—that is, the changing concepts and models of interpretation in historical research. Even though some of the contributors could have addressed one of these main themes more explicitly, the collection provides detailed analyses and persuasive arguments. It highlights key developments of nineteenth-century psychiatry within the political and cultural contexts of that period, as well as in terms of relevance for the twentieth century. At the same time, and to its credit, the collection offers some microhistoric studies showing that the picture is much more complicated than it seems to be. For example, psychiatry in the nineteenth century cannot simply be broken down according to well-known dichotomies, such as the "somatic" versus the "mental" approach, or "asylum" versus "university" psychiatrists. These oversimplified categories often distort a highly complex situation that features intricate, eclectic, and even contradictory developments. Most of the articles are case studies dealing with the way psychiatrists grew to be a group of scientific experts with authority in perceiving, interpreting, and controlling mental disorders. In particular, coordination with legal and judicial authorities (leading to the new specialty of forensic psychiatry), the politics involving psychiatric certification, and the growing importance of military psychiatry (which took advantage of the high social status of the armed forces) opened up new vistas for the scientific maneuvers of the psychiatric profession. At the same time, its rising power in defining and managing mental disease met [End Page 821] with some opposition. Protest movements accused the profession of abusing its power by institutionalizing the sane. Psychiatrists repeatedly had difficulty convincing the public that they alone could assess mental disorders properly. It is fascinating to see how a discipline on the eve of its expansion and professionalization process was vulnerable with regard to its scientific authority and acceptance in society. This collection constitutes an important contribution toward a deeper historical understanding of the multifaceted dimension of nineteenth-century psychiatry in German-speaking countries. Readers can draw from a store of information about how psychiatry came to play a major role in the far-reaching scientific processes that shaped Imperial Germany. They also will learn that the emergence of psychiatry as a scientific discipline was not a homogeneous development devoid of conflicting interests or articulated resistance—indeed, this collection is noteworthy for its rich and sensitive treatments of the inevitable contradictions and conflicts that marked psychiatry's path toward becoming a profession. The bilingual character of the book is also worth mentioning: while the majority of the articles are...