Degenerate Theory Research Articles

Exceptional racism at the dawn of scientific psychiatry in Brazil: the curious case of Juliano Moreira.

Twenty years ago, the British Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial regarding racism and psychiatry. Three decades ago, the journal published a lecture by Professor Michael Sheperd about Kraepelin's contributions to racist degeneration theories. A century ago, Albert Einstein visited the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, where he was hosted by Juliano Moreira [1872-1933], one of the most distinguished Brazilian scientists of that time. The only son of a former enslaved woman, he is regarded as one of the founding fathers of scientific psychiatry in Brazil. Moreira may have been a case of 'exceptional racism', the strategy of praising outstanding people from oppressed groups as a way of denying or covering up processes of structural racism.

Increasing hub disruption parallels dementia severity in autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract Hub regions in the brain, recognized for their roles in ensuring efficient information transfer, are vulnerable to pathological alterations in neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Computational simulations and animal experiments have hinted at the theory of activity-dependent degeneration as the cause of this hub vulnerability. However, two critical issues remain unresolved. First, past research has not clearly distinguished between two scenarios: hub regions facing a higher risk of connectivity disruption (targeted attack) and all regions having an equal risk (random attack). Second, human studies offering support for activity-dependent explanations remain scarce. We refined the hub disruption index to demonstrate a hub disruption pattern in functional connectivity in autosomal dominant AD that aligned with targeted attacks. This hub disruption is detectable even in preclinical stages 12 years before the expected symptom onset and is amplified alongside symptomatic progression. Moreover, hub disruption was primarily tied to regional differences in global connectivity and sequentially followed changes observed in amyloid-beta positron emission tomography cortical markers, consistent with the activity-dependent degeneration explanation. Taken together, our findings deepened the understanding of brain network organization in neurodegenerative diseases and could be instrumental in refining diagnostic and targeted therapeutic strategies for AD in the future.

Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809-1873): The Originator of the Degenerative Theory of the Heredity of Mental Disorders and the Pioneer of the Biological Approach to Psychiatry.

The concept of progressive hereditary degeneration, which significantly influenced medical, particularly psychiatric and in turn social thought of the second half of the 19th century, was articulated by Bénédict Augustin Morel. The distinguished French psychiatrist developed the theory of degeneration and created the nosological framework of the heredity of mental illness in order to explain the more frequent psychoses and nervous disorders. In the absence of patho-anatomical findings, Morel attributed these phenomena to hereditary causes. His theory was the first attempt to interpret insanity, mental disorders, and criminality, across generations, andformed the basis for the further development of psychiatry. It had a notable influence on many scientific disciplines of the time, such as criminology, anthropology, biology, and general pathology. It would later result in the emergence of eugenics, which raised several moral issues and would ultimately be used in many ways to justify segregation.Morel was mainly influenced by the monogenetic degenerative theory and believed that social progress could be achieved by the coupling of psychiatry, a social medicine, with philosophy and Christianity.

Historical and conceptual features of acute polymorphic psychosis: a myth of European psychiatry from bouffée délirante to ICD-11 acute and transient psychotic disorder.

This paper deals with the history and epistemology of acute polymorphic psychosis. We undertook a comparative study of short-lived psychotic disorders used in different European countries since the late nineteenth century. The theory of degeneration offered a speculative basis to conceptualization of conditions such as bouffée délirante, cycloid psychosis and reactive psychosis, but it seems likely that different factors contributed to the profusion of clinical concepts with adverse effects on both nomenclature and classification. The resulting picture suggests that earlier nosological concepts tend to converge on common descriptive features and challenge the diagnostic categories for short-lived psychotic disorders listed in modern symptom-based psychiatric classifications.

Degeneration Theory and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

I am here interested in presenting a comparative analysis between the strand of thought known as ‘Degeneration Theory’ and Dostoevsky’s last major novel, The Brothers Karamazov. I will provide a brief contextualization about the influence of Degeneration Theory on Russian thought, postulating that the principal Russian preoccupation concerning degenerate attitudes – above all in Dostoevsky - consists in the disease of moral nihilism. I proceed by outlining the criminal type in The Brothers Karamazov by focalizing my inquiry around the figure of the illegitimate epileptic brother Smerdjakov. My main arguments around the question of social and physiological degeneration will be developed in the subsection devoted to the relationship between poverty and children, whose humility, it is argued, represents Dostoevsky’s answer to the death of God and the moral bankruptcy enacted by nihilistic tendencies. In the third segment I will analyse the maddening outcomes of this disease in my discussion of Ivan Karamazov. Lastly, I will venture into a more unreserved discussion about the purported sequel to The Brothers Karamazov. This study seeks to emphasize the importance in the relationship between characters and the God question, ultimately claiming that for Dostoevsky physical degeneration is deployed as a physiological counterpart for the chief concern of many degenerationist narratives: the spiritual degradation of the individual soul and of the integrity of civilization.

Revisiting Emil Kraepelin's eugenic arguments.

It is widely recognized that Emil Kraepelin explicitly advocated for eugenic ideas in his academic works. Given the renewed interest in related concepts such as self-domestication and neo-Lamarckism in different contexts, this article revisits his eugenic arguments by scrutinizing a section of his seminal work, the 8th edition of his textbook published in 1909. Our analysis reveals that Kraepelin's arguments consisted of multiple theories and ideas prevalent at the time (i.e. self-domestication hypothesis, neo-Lamarckism, degeneration theory, social Darwinism, racism and ethnic nationalism), each of which presented individual fundamental claims. Nevertheless, Kraepelin amalgamated them into one combined narrative, which crystallized into an anti-humanistic psychiatry in the next generation. This paper cautions that a similar 'packaging of ideas' might be emerging now.

‘Le Barbare parle Grec’: French Classical Scholars and the Racialisation of Modern Greek

ABSTRACT This article investigates the use of philology and classical scholarship in the racial categorisation of modern Greeks by French scholars in Greece in the second half of the nineteenth century, in particular the members of the French School in Athens, founded in 1846. It argues that modern Greeks are ‘racialised’ by these scholars of antiquity in relation to their perceived proximity with their classical heritage. It thus demonstrates how classical scholarship and philology are used as tools to justify racial inferiority and theories of degeneration through systematic scientific attempts to categorise and create scientific hierarchies grounded in linguistic difference.

Troubled Minds, or Psychiatry in Vilnius in the Second Half of the 19th Century

This article presents an overview of the development of psychiatric centres in Vilnius in the second half of the long 19th century. The author analyses how, having undergone a whole range of infrastructural and conceptual changes, this branch of medicine was transformed from being a series of Medieval practices based on the forced isolation of patients to a science acknowledging modern methods of treatment. The most changes could be seen in the period from 1903 to 1905, when the Vilnius District Hospital, the largest psychiatric asylum in the Russian Empire, was established. This period coincided with the leadership of the new institution’s first director Nikolai Krainskii. It was then that the principles of non-restraint and the ideas of cultivating a patient’s work activities and social skills, which had been formulated in Western Europe at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, were implemented. On the other hand, the author also tries to show how, under the effects of degeneration theory, psychiatry in the Russian Empire adopted a conservative political bias, which seemed to be effective in constructing discriminatory models of interethnic relations. The conclusion arising from this research is that in Vilnius, much like in other multiethnic Imperial border cities, psychiatric asylums served not only as medical institutions but also as statistical centres. Data about patients collected each year by the clinics and then passed on to the Medical Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was a potentially useful tool for the stigmatisation of entire local ethnic communities.

A Tale of Enduring Myths: Buffon’s Theory of Animal Degeneration and the Regeneration of Domesticated Animals in Mid-19th Century Brazil

The long 19th century was a period of many developments and technical innovations in agriculture and animal biology, during which actors sought to incorporate new practices in light of new information. By the middle of the century, however, while heredity steadily became the dominant concept in animal husbandry, some policies related to livestock improvement in Brazil seemed to have been tailored following a climate-deterministic concept established in the mid-18th century by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon. His theory of animal degeneration posited, among other things, the necessity of recurrent crossbreeding to preserve animal species living in nonnative environments from climate-induced degeneration. Although largely discredited by the early 19th century, the teachings of the French naturalist seem to have found supporters in a Brazilian program to modernize national agriculture through the application of the natural sciences. Herein I examine the revival of Buffon’s theories in that government-sponsored program to improve animal husbandry and breeding techniques, including actual applications of this theory in the real world. Ultimately, I argue that Buffon’s theory of degeneration was used to tailor public policies and funding for the improvement of domesticated animals in Brazil between 1856 and 1860.

Interpreting Issues of Heredity and Inheritance in Holmesian Children through Criminal Anthropology and Degeneration Theory

This article focuses on the ways in which childhood in the Holmesian canon tends to epitomise pervasive Victorian anxieties connected with inheritance and heredity in their double economic and genetic significance. On the one hand, because children represent an earlier state of biological and social development, their growth and education are seen as potential paths to progress. On the other, they become the physical embodiment of previous stages of evolution that so plagued the Victorian imagination, and can exhibit signs of regression and degeneration. Simultaneously, children also carry socio-economic value, as the heirs to their parents’ property. Their helplessness in defending themselves and, as a result, this economic patrimony, adds to their liminal position: children in the canon become the expression of hope for the future and the progress of society, and at the same time, of the fear of impoverishment and regression. Finally, the article shows that the action of the detective, whose scientific approach incorporates criminal anthropology alongside hard sciences, ultimately strives to decode the unpredictable, uncontrollable offspring of Victorian society. His normalising action targets inheritance in its ambivalence, striving to restore order in the economic-juridical domain and investigating the transmittance of hereditary traits.

“Fast lapsing back into barbarism”: Social Evolution, the Myth of Progress and the Gothic Past in Late-Victorian Invasion and Catastrophe Fiction

While neo-barbarian dystopian futures are typically associated with contemporary popular culture, they were not, in fact, uncommon in late-Victorian popular fiction, especially in the politically charged, future-oriented popular fiction subgenres of invasion fiction and catastrophe fiction. Focusing on a representative tale from each subgenre – George Griffith’s Olga Romanoff (1894) and Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885) – this article shows how they made innovative use of the gothic to show the future following a large-scale war or natural disaster as a decline back into an exaggerated version of the barbaric past. Reworking the familiar gothic trope of doomed inheritance, the tales showed nemesis occurring not on an individual or familial level, but on an extensive societal scale in keeping with their sweeping narratives of mass death and its aftermath. In presenting a post-catastrophe relapse to barbarism, the tales were extrapolating from the social evolution theories of Herbert Spencer and Walter Bagehot which, though delineating the forward tendency of western social progress, allowed the fearful corollary that in periods of crisis advanced societies might also regress. While popular fiction’s engagement with theories of biological degeneration has been well researched, engagements with these theories of societal reversion have received less attention. Applying them to invasion and catastrophe fiction elucidates how the tales used their regressive futures to warn hubristic nineteenth-century modernity about its potential comeuppance if it continued to either aggressively militarise or unthinkingly exploit the non-human world, two major negative social tendencies which were the source of considerable contemporary anxiety.

Heathen: Religion and Race in American History

Heathen: Religion and Race in American History

Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France by Anne Linton

Reviewed by: Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France by Anne Linton Céline Brossillon Linton, Anne. Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France. Cambridge UP, 2022. ISBN 978-1-316-51182-4. Pp. 250. Anne Linton's book offers an important contribution to the history of sexuality by discussing intersex people, "individuals whose bodies, or senses of self, challenged binary sex" (2), otherwise known as "hermaphrodites" in the nineteenth century, in medical archives (first part of the book) and literature, both high and low (second half of the book). The archival research Linton has undertaken is massive, bringing to light over 200 newly uncovered case studies of gender ambiguous people from 1800 to 1920. She also analyzes how long-forgotten popular fiction influenced several well-known texts, allowing Linton to propose fresh readings of famous authors like Balzac, Gautier, and Zola. Unmaking Sex is the first book to explore why "hermaphrodism" was a central theme in nineteenth-century medicine and literature, and to discuss the social anxieties around those "gender outlaws" (2). Because of the Napoleonic Code (1804) which required the sex of the baby to be recorded on the birth certificate within three days of birth, Linton claims that many scholars have assumed that the nineteenth-century French had a very rigid binary vision of its individuals, but she shows that some doctors and authors actually challenged the concept of "True Sex" (the one-body-one-sex rule) as they realized that some individuals fell outside of this binary. Linton believes the literature supports the claim made by some doctors that the observation of the external body might not tell the whole story about someone. Some therefore advocated for adding a "neuter sex," "doubtful sex," or "third sex" category to article 57 of the civil code to better acknowledge the variation of bodies. Even though Balzac, Gautier, and Zola seem forward-thinking, she warns us not to "assign too revolutionary and subversive a status to our novelists" as they "also announce that non-normative identities have no place in nineteenth-century France" (134). A growing medical discourse connecting external signs of "doubtful sex" with mental deficiencies throughout the nineteenth century allows Linton to establish a link between the discourses around intersex and Zola's theory of degeneration, a connection which had been overlooked in scholarship. "Hermaphrodism" was sometimes therefore perceived as the result of "degenerate heredity," linking "doubtful sex" and teratology, and "hermaphrodism" with homosexuality. Throughout her book and then more specifically at the end, Linton draws parallels between those nineteenth-century sources and contemporary concerns and debates around intersex individuals in the United States. She discusses how medical protocols to assign gender at birth have been met with growing resistance and criticism since early sex assignment surgeries and treatments are considered damaging to the child. Mental health rather than sex assignment, and a more patient-centered medicine, are the path forward. Since France is the focus of the book, addressing the state of the debate around intersex [End Page 195] individuals from a medical, legal, and literary standpoint in France would have been a nice way to loop the loop, even though the discussion of the case of the United States is also invaluable. [End Page 196] Céline Brossillon Ursinus College (PA) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Nordau’s warning- Aesthetics under siege

This research paper delves into the contrasting ideologies of Max Nordau, a prominent critic of the 19th century, and Oscar Wilde, a renowned aesthete and playwright, in the context of late Victorian society. Nordau's theory of degeneration, which condemned deviations from societal norms as signs of cultural decay, is analyzed alongside Wilde's deliberate embrace of excess, maximalism, and aestheticism. By juxtaposing Nordau's conservative views against Wilde's avant-garde approach, this paper explores how Wilde's subversion of Victorian beauty standards challenged prevailing notions of aesthetics, morality, and individuality. Through an in-depth examination of Wilde's works and Nordau's critiques, this research sheds light on the intellectual and artistic tension of the era, highlighting the clash between traditional values and emerging avant-garde movements.

READING DOYLE’S „THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES“ THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE GOTHIC GENRE

The exploitation of Gothic elements in detective fiction was long regarded as a skillful way to create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery. However, writers have often relied on the power of the Gothic not only to intrigue and unsettle the reader, but also, more importantly, to direct attention to complex taboo topics of their time. This essen- tial function of the Gothic can be identified in Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, which alludes to many delicate issues of the fin-de-siècle British society, including violence, mental illness, and criminality. These phenomena were often exam- ined by late Victorians in the light of degeneration theory, which held that abnormal forms of behavior were signs of bad heredity and bio- logical regression. Thus, this paper investigates whether degeneration theory played a role in Doyle’s characterization of the novel’s criminal antagonist Jack Stapleton by focusing on how his appearance, behavior, and actions are represented in the text. It is argued that Doyle delib- erately uses the Gothic motif of duality to disperse the illusion of a clear boundary between the civilized “self” and the barbaric “other,” thereby implicitly stressing the complexity of human nature. Accordingly, the analysis, which rests on Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, reveals that Stapleton’s moral decay should not be read as an indicator of his hereditary predisposition toward crime but rather as a result of mental tensions that he fails to control.

HybrUR: A Hybrid Physical-Neural Solution for Unsupervised Underwater Image Restoration.

Robust vision restoration of underwater images remains a challenge. Owing to the lack of well-matched underwater and in-air images, unsupervised methods based on the cyclic generative adversarial framework have been widely investigated in recent years. However, when using an end-to-end unsupervised approach with only unpaired image data, mode collapse could occur, and the color correction of the restored images is usually poor. In this paper, we propose a data- and physics-driven unsupervised architecture to perform underwater image restoration from unpaired underwater and in-air images. For effective color correction and quality enhancement, an underwater image degeneration model must be explicitly constructed based on the optically unambiguous physics law. Thus, we employ the Jaffe-McGlamery degeneration theory to design a generator and use neural networks to model the process of underwater visual degeneration. Furthermore, we impose physical constraints on the scene depth and degeneration factors for backscattering estimation to avoid the vanishing gradient problem during the training of the hybrid physical-neural model. Experimental results show that the proposed method can be used to perform high-quality restoration of unconstrained underwater images without supervision. On multiple benchmarks, the proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art supervised and unsupervised approaches. We demonstrate that our method yields encouraging results in real-world applications.

Karl Grassmann's 1896 paper "critical overview of contemporary theories of the heredity of the psychoses".

Four years before the rediscovery of Mendel's work in 1900, Karl Grassmann published a detailed, scholarly review of the heredity of psychosis which we here review. A full translation is in the appendix. We emphasize seven major conclusions from this review. First, while recognizing the key importance of heredity in the etiology of psychosis. Grassmann was critical of many of the highly speculative extant theories. Second, he reviewed most of the major methodologic concerns in the literature from what kinds of heredity to investigate to the problems with the global use of insanity as a diagnostic category. Third, he discussed in detail genetic theories associated with Degeneration theory, maintaining considerable skepticism. Fourth, he recognized nongenetic contribution to familial transmission. Fifth, he reviewed evidence for both homogeneous and heterogeneous transmission of forms of mental illness in families, suggesting that both were important. Sixth, while he noted that mania, melancholia, and cyclothymia commonly replaced each other in families, Verrücktheit (delusional psychoses) rarely co-segregated in families with these mood disorders. Seventh, Grassmann, like other 19th century writers, saw relatives to be of value only in assessing the level of hereditary predisposition in patients and had limited appreciation of the need for controlled studies.

The Rhetoric of Early American Ethnography: Framing Politics in the Texts by Crèvecoeur, Jefferson and Tyler

This paper studies early American manners and customs chapters in the texts written by J. Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur, Thomas Jefferson, and Royall Tyler as precursors to ethnography, and demonstrates how these writers use ethnographic mode to explore their contemporary political issues. The paper argues that the ethnographic accounts in these chapters are less the objective representations of cultures than the political views shrouded in ethnographic modes. The argument then is that the chapters should be treated as rhetorical frames. To exemplify this argument, the paper analyzes Crèvecoeur’s Nantucket sequence in Letters from an American Farmer and demonstrates its pro-capitalist political aspirations. The paper also takes up Jefferson’s descriptions of Native Americans in Notes on the States of Virginia and shows how he used the ethnographic descriptions and scientific methodology to test whether the European settlers could prosper in the new land—particularly in the early nineteenth-century context of the theory of biological degeneration that assumed that a particular geographic context could determine the intellectual and moral aspects of a race. Finally, the paper reads the ethnographic accounts in Tyler’s The Algerine Captive and demonstrates how the whole book was a persuasive attempt to solidify support for the strong national government amidst the continued opposition within American states to join the new federal structure instituted by the new 1789 Constitution.

History of Psychology in Brazil: the different meanings of degeneration (1903-1930)

The purpose of this article is to analyze the records related to the diagnosis of degeneration (concept derived from Traité des dégénérescences, by Bénedict-Augustin Morel, published in 1857), based on documents from institutions for the insane according to the Assistência aos Alienados no Brasil program (Brazilian Assistance to Individuals with Mental Illnesses). The aim of this work, with a theoretical framework, is to assess interpretative asymmetries related to theories of degeneration at the beginning of the 20th century. Emphasis is given to the particularities of interpretation of the theory of degeneration in the Brazil, which may be attributed to the policies introduced by the newly settled Republic regarding racial mixing in the local society as a result of the trafficking of enslaved Africans before the abolition of slavery (1888). Intellectuals started to explain the Brazilian reality through race, which often led to the diagnosis of people’s degeneration of psychophysiological nature. However, according to a diachronic perspective, the term “degeneration” has had different meanings, mainly within the period covered by this article, during which Juliano Moreira, a doctor with black and white ancestry and a Kraepelin scholar, occupied the role of director of the Hospício Nacional de Alienados (National Institute for Individuals with Mental Illnesses), from 1903 to 1930.

"Impulsive insanity" according to Emil Kraepelin : Aclinical framework for female criminals at the beginning of the twentieth century

In his comprehensive classification of the beginning of the twentieth century, Emil Kraepelin provided adetailed description of an entity he called "impulsive insanity", which had not been elaborated before him. The forms depicted by him largely corresponded to the offences, which were referred to as typically female in their nature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. How did Kraepelin classify "impulsive insanity" and what forms did he describe? Did Kraepelin also see these disorders predominantly prevailing in women, did he establish aconnection with women's criminality and how did this fit into the discourses of the time on femininity, criminal legislation and degeneration? This study focused on the clinical picture "impulsive insanity" as described by Emil Kraepelin in his main work, the 8th edition of his Textbook of Psychiatry published between 1909 and 1915. His description was analyzed in detail and embedded in ahistorical context on the basis of secondary literature. In rudiments Kraepelin's clinical classification is still comprehensible today, although there are major differences to how literature in later years treated this issue. Kraepelin clearly sees "impulsive insanity" as adriving disorder predominantly prevailing in women. Elaborating his concept of "impulsive insanity", Kraepelin positioned himself in relation to important scientific discourses of the early twentieth century, such as the debate on criminal legislation and the theory of degeneration. On the basis of the individual forms of "impulsive insanity" described by Kraepelin, various concepts of constructing and pathologizing femininity can be identified. Apparently, it also aims to explain common female crimes within the patriarchal hegemony.