The History of Psychiatry (P02568)

Convenor: Ivan Crozier

Science Studies Unit
University of Edinburgh
Chisholm House
High School Yards
Edinburgh EH1 1LZ
ivan.crozier@ed.ac.uk

Introduction:

This course surveys the history of psychiatry as a medical field. It does so by focusing on
the construction of specific psychiatric objects from the nineteenth century to the present.
While broadly chronological, the aim of this course is to emphasise the practices of
psychiatrists rather than give a complete historical overview of the subject. It focuses on a
few specific issues, often comparing different approaches to the problem from a number of
standpoints and across time. It encourages students to think about issues of interpretation of
psychiatric discourses, and as such, I have included a number of primary sources that will
help students to ground each of the secondary sources in actual psychiatric material. This,
to my mind, encourages good historical practice. There is also a list of necessary secondary
sources provided, with which you should engage as well when writing your essays.

Credits: 20

Time/Place: first semester, weeks 1-10; Seminar: Tuesday 2-5, Seminar Room in
Chisholm House, High School Yards.

Assessment:

1 x 3-4000 word essay (100%) on a topic addressed in the course. You should consult me
about your topic and the material you will discuss. Due: Tuesday 14th December, 2010..

All course work must be submitted as a hard copy AND electronically.

Submitting the hard copy

You must submit one copy of your assignment (essay or coursework) to the Graduate School
Office (room 1.21, Chrystal Macmillan Building) by 4pm on the date the assignment is due.
You must attach an assignment cover sheet to the hard copy and a 'Declaration of own work'
(if this is your first assignment for the current semester).

Both forms are available in WebCT and from the Graduate School Office.

Electronic Submission
Students must submit their assignment electronically, by the same deadline, in addition to
submitting the hard copy.

A guide to submitting online is available at

http://www.elearn.malts.ed.ac.uk/services/plagiarism/downloads/SubmitTurnitinPLWebCT.pd
f or on request from the Graduate School office (gradschool.sps@ed.ac.uk).

If you experience technical difficulties in uploading your submission please contact the
Information Services helpdesk (IS.Helpline@ed.ac.uk ) with details of the problem. You will
not be penalised for lateness if you were unable to submit the electronic version for technical
reasons. However, you may asked for the call reference number or other evidence that you
contacted the Information Services helpdesk before the deadline.

IMPORTANT NOTES
• Save your essay or assignment with a file name that includes your exam number (printed
on your student card).
• To ensure your work is marked anonymously do not include your name or matriculation
number anywhere in the file, but do include your exam number.
• When uploading your file you will be asked for a submission title, please prefix the title
with your exam number as this helps us to ensure your submission is correctly logged.

Aims and Desired Outcomes

On successful completion of the course students will have demonstrated through written
work, oral presentations and other contributions in class, that they:

* have a substantive knowledge and understanding of a selection of important issues within

the history of psychiatry, and of the contending viewpoints and claims on these issues;

* have an appreciation of the different context in which psychiatric knowledge is developed,

and can comment intelligently on the importance of these contexts;

* have developed sophisticated interpretive skills in the analysis of historical documents;

* can identify and characterise key approaches to understanding and evaluating issues within
the historiography of psychiatry, and identify advantages, problems and implications of these
approaches;

*can apply these understandings and skills, and deploy some of these approaches, concepts
and techniques, in analysing a new problem in the history of psychiatry, and in other areas of
the history of science and medicine.
Structure

Ten topics will be addressed, each one dealing with a theme or body of work of recognised
importance in the wider context of the history of psychiatry.

1. Introduction and Contexts

2. Constructing Categories I: Moral insanity
3. Constructing Categories II: Sexual perversion
4. Clinical Problems I: Schizophrenia
5. Clinical Problems II: Depression
6. Social Problems I: Eating Disorders
7. Social Problems II: Criminal Insanity
8. Psychiatry and Difference I: Colonial psychiatry
9. Psychiatry and Difference II: Culture-Bound Syndromes
10. Summing up: interpretive issues

Seminars

All seminars (except the first and last) will focus on primary sources. This will raise certain
methodological issues. In order to prepare for seminars, you are expected to think about the
following with regard to the sources you have read:

• How is the object (schizophrenia, culture-bound syndromes, etc.) constructed in

the text you are reading?
• What evidence (case histories, clinical reports, statistics, anecdotes, etc.) is used
for the claims the author is making?
• How does the author relate their claims to other works in the field (criticism,
adaptation, or acceptance of other claims, etc.)?
• What ‘kind of person’ (Hacking) is made up in the discourse being considered?
• Where does patient experience fit into these dicourses?

Thinking about these issues will get to the heart of some of the key issues in the history
of psychiatry, and will raise methodological issues that will be transferable to other
areas of the subject.

Selected General Readings

(These sources should be used to ground the specific topics discussed each week. This list
is far from exhaustive.)

Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac,
John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Edward Shorter, Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry, Oxford UP, 2005.

WF Bynum, “Psychiatry in its historical context,” in M. Shepherd and O.L. Zangwill (eds),
General Psychopathology (Vol.I of Handbook of Psychiatry), Cambridge University Press,
1982, pp. 11-38, 245-51.

WF Bynum, Roy S. Porter & Michael Shepherd, The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the
History of Psychiatry, 3 Vols, London: Tavistock, 1985
German E. Berrios and Hugh Freeman (eds), 150 Years of British Psychiatry 1841-1991,
London: Gaskell, 1991

Jan Goldstein, “Psychiatry”, in Bynum and Porter, Companion Encyclopedia of the History of
Medicine, London, Routledge, 1993

Roy Porter, Madness: a brief history, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002

Michel Foucault, Mental Illness and Psychology Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York:
Harper and Row, 1976.

Michel Foucault, History of Madness, Foreword by Ian Hacking, Jean Khalfa (ed.), Jonathan
Murphy and Jean Khalfa (trans.), London, Routledge, 2006

EH Ackerknecht, A Short History of Psychiatry, New York: Hafner, 1959

John Henry, on Thomas Reid’s faculty psychology

Mark Micale, “The Psychiatric Body,” in Roger Cooter, and John Pickstone, (eds.), Medicine
in the Twentieth Century, London, Routledge, 2000, chap. 22.

Ian Dowbiggin, Inheriting Madness: Professionalization and Psychiatric Knowledge in

Nineteenth-Century France, Berkeley: California UP, 1991.

German Berrios, The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology Since the
Nineteenth Century, Cambridge UP, 1996

Otto Marx, “What is the history of psychiatry?” History of Psychiatry, 3,1992, pp. 279-292,
293-301

John Henry, "Psychology and the Laws of Nature: From Souls to the Powers of the Mind in
the Scottish Enlightenment", in Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell (eds), Medicine and
Religion in Enlightenment Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2007), pp. 243-58.

Mikkel Borsch-Jacobsen, Making Minds and Madness, Cambridge UP, 2009, first chapter.
especially.

NB: it is also expected that in preparation for each seminar and for your essays you look
through the journal History of Psychiatry (http://hpy.sagepub.com/) and Social Science and
Medicine (http://journals.elsevier.com/02779536/social-science-and-medicine/ ) and for
relevant other primary (and historical) sources in the British Journal of Psychiatry (previously
called Journal of Mental Science, searchable at http://bjp.rcpsych.org/) for further primary
and secondary readings. Other psychiatric journals are also appropriate, such as the
American Journal of Insanity, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, The Journal of Nervous and
Mental Disease, etc. These journals often carry history of psychiatry articles.

In addition to these published sources, you may profit from the following blogs:
http://historypsychiatry.wordpress.com/, http://psychiatryandhistory.blogspot.com/, and
http://www.somatosphere.net/
Weekly Topics

1. Introduction and contexts

Reading:

Eric J. Engstrom, Clinical Psychiatry in Imperial Germany: A History of Psychiatric Practice.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004

Michel Foucault, History of Madness, Foreword by Ian Hacking, Jean Khalfa (ed.), Jonathan
Murphy and Jean Khalfa (trans.), London, Routledge, 2006

Roy Porter, Madness: a brief history, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002

Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac,
John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

German Berrios The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology Since the
Nineteenth Century, Cambridge UP, 1996

2. Moral insanity

Primary sources:

Anon, “Moral Insanity”, The American Journal of Insanity, 14, 1857-58, pp. 311-320

James Cowles Prichard, On the different forms of insanity, in relation to jurisprudence,

designed for the use of persons concerned in legal questions regarding unsoundness of
mind, London: H. Baillière, 1842 (selections)

J.C. Prichard, “Moral Insanity,” History of Psychiatry 1999; 10; pp. 117-26

George Savage, “Moral Insanity,” Journal of Mental Science, 27, 1881, 147-55.

Readings:

HF Augstein, “JC Prichard’s concept of moral insanity—a medical theory of the corruption of
human nature”, Medical History, 40, 1996, pp. 311-43

Roger Smith, Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials, Edinburgh UP,
1981 (selections)

German Berrios, “J. C. Prichard and the concept of `moral insanity',” History of Psychiatry,
10, 1999, pp. 111-16

For background to the Edinburgh School view of the mind, see John Henry, "Psychology and
the Laws of Nature: From Souls to the Powers of the Mind in the Scottish Enlightenment", in
Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell (eds), Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment
Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2007), pp. 243-58.
3. Sexual perversion

Primary sources:

James Kiernan, “Psychological Aspects of the Sexual Appetite,” Alienist and Neurologist,
1891, pp. 188-218

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 12th ed, selections

Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, selections.

Readings:

Arnold Davidson, “How to do the History of Psychoanalysis: a reading of Freud's Three

Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” Critical Inquiry, 13, 1986/87, pp. 252-77

Arnold Davidson, “Closing up the Corpses: Diseases of Sexuality and the Emergence of the
Psychiatric Style of Reasoning,” in George Boolos (ed.), Meaning and Method: Essays in
honour of Hilary Putnam, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 295-325

Arnold Davidson, “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality,” Critical Inquiry, 14, 1987, pp.16-48.
These three essays are reprinted with other essays in Davidson, The Emergence of
Sexuality, Harvard UP, 2001.

Renate Hauser, “Krafft-Ebing's Psychological Understanding of Sexual Behaviour,” in Porter

and Teich, Sexual Science, Sexual Knowledge, Cambridge, 1994, pp.210-227

Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature, Chicago UP, 2000.

Ivan Crozier, introduction to Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds, Sexual Inversion,
London, Palgrave, 2007, pp. 1-86.

4. Schizophrenia

Primary sources:

Emil Kraepelin, Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia, trans. R. Mary Barclay, ed. George M.
Robertson, Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger, 1971 (selections)

Schneider, K. Clinical Psychopathology. New York: Grune and Stratton. 1959

R D Laing, The Divided Self, London, Tavistock Publications, 1961.

AJ Bain, ‘The influence of Cardiazol on Chronic Schizophrenia’, Journal of Mental Science,

86, 1940, pp.502–13

F.B.E. Charatan, ‘An Evaluation of Chlorpromazine ("Largactil") in Psychiatry’, Journal of

Mental Science, Oct 1954, 100, pp.882-893

Russell Fraser and Douglas Stanley, ‘The Interruption of Coma in Insulin Shock Therapy’,
The Lancet, 21 January 1939, p.140-3

R Freudenberg, ‘On the Curability of Mental Diseases by ‘Shock’ Treatment’, Journal of

Mental Science, 87, 1941, pp.529–44
L Meduna & B Rohny, ‘Insulin and Cardiazol Treatment of Schizophrenia’, The Lancet, 20
May 1939, pp. 1139-42

Readings:

Robert Boyers and Robert Orrill (eds.) Laing and Anti-Psychiatry, Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1972.

Ian Hacking, Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses,
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998.

Ian Hacking, “Les alienes voyageurs: How Fugue Became a Medical Entity,” History of
Psychiatry, 7, 1996, pp. 425-449.

Matthias W. Weber and Eric J. Engstrom, “Kraepelin's ‘diagnostic cards’: the confluence of
clinical research and preconceived categories,” History of Psychiatry, 8, 1997, pp. 375-85.

J Hoenig, “The concept of Schizophrenia. Kraepelin-Bleuler-Schneider,” The British Journal

of Psychiatry 142, 1983, pp. 547-556

FE James, ‘Insulin treatment in Psychiatry’, History of Psychiatry, 3, 1992, pp.221–35

Niall McCrae, “‘A Violent Thunderstorm”: Cardiazol Treatment in British Mental Hospitals’,
History of Psychiatry, 17, 2006, pp. 67-90

Deborah Blythe Doroshow, ‘Performing a Cure for Schizophrenia: Insulin Coma Therapy on
the Wards’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 62, 2007, pp. 213-43

To put some of these somatic treatments and their histories into perspective, see:

Andrew Scull, ‘The Historiography of Somatic Treatments in Psychiatry’, History of

Psychiatry, 5, 1994, pp.1–12

For an account of patient experience in a mental institution in Britain (after a misdiagnosis of

schizophrenia), see Jean Davison, The Dark Threads, Accent Press, 2009.

5. Depression

Primary sources:

W. F. Farquharson, On Melancholia: An Analysis of 730 Consecutive Cases, Journal of

Mental Science, Jan 1894; 40: 11 - 21. & Apr 1894; 40: 196 - 206.

DF Klein, ’Endogenomorphic depression. A conceptual and terminological revision’. Arch.

Gen. Psychiatry, xxxi, 1974, 447-54.

DSM IV (1994) criteria for Depressive Disorders and Depressive Episodes:

http://www.mental-health-today.com/dep/dsm.htm

Leslie Farber, "Ours is the Addicted Society," New York Times Magazine, 11 December
1966, pp. 43 & p. 106
‘The Creation of the Prozac Myth’, The Guardian, 27th February 2008 accessed here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/27/mentalhealth.health1

Eli Lilly Official webpage—accessed here: http://www.prozac.com/index.jsp

Readings:

German Berrios, “Melancholia and depression during the 19th century: a conceptual History,”
British Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 1998, pp. 298-304

Christopher Callahan and German Berrios, Reinventing Depression: A History of the

Treatment of Depression in Primary Care. 1940–2004, Oxford UP, 2005

G.E. Berrios and J.M. Olivares, “The anhedonias: a conceptual history,” History of
Psychiatry, 6, 1995, pp. 453-70

George Rousseau, “Depression's forgotten genealogy: notes towards a history of

depression,” History of Psychiatry, 11, 2000, pp. 71-106

Linda M Blum and Nena F Stracuzzi ‘Gender in the Prozac Nation: Popular Discourse and
Productive Femininity’, Gender and Society, 18, 3, 2004, pp. 269-286

David Healy, ‘Shaping the Intimate: Influences on the Experience of Everyday Nerves’,
Social Studies of Science, 34, 2, 2004, pp.219-24

David Healy, Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical
Industry and Depression, New York University Press, 2006

David Healy, ‘Birth, Ritalin, Prozac, Viagra, Death’ in Belinda Bennet, Terry Carney and
Isabel Karpin (eds), Brave New World of Health, Federation Press, Willan Publishing, 2009

David Herzberg, ‘Prozac and the Incorporation of the Brain’ in idem, From Miltown to Prozac:
Happy Pills in America, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, pp.150-191

Jonathan Metzl, Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs,
Durham, Duke University Press, 2003

6. Eating Disorders, particularly anorexia

Primary sources:

Kathleen Franco, “Eating Disorders”:

http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/psychiatry-
psychology/eating-disorders/

L.-V. Marce,’On a form of hypochondriacal delirium occuring secondary to dyspepsia, and

characterised by refusal of food’. Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology,
xiii (1860) 264-6

W Gull, Anorexia nervosa (apepsia histerica, anorexia histerica), Trans Clin Soc London 7
(1874), pp. 22–28

Australian and New Zealand Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Anorexia
Nervosa, at http://focus.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/reprint/3/4/618
Raymond Prince, “The concept of culture-bound syndromes: anorexia nervosa and brain
fag,” Social Science and Medicine. 21, 1985: 197-203

Readings:

Sloane Madden, “‘Anorexia Nervosa’ – Still Relevant in the Twenty-first Century? A Review
of William Gull’s Anorexia Nervosa” Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Jan 2004; vol.
9: pp. 149 - 154.

Tilmann Habermas and A. Beveridge, “Historical continuities and discontinuities between

religious and medical interpretations of extreme fasting: The background to Giovanni
Brugnoli's description of two cases of anorexia nervosa in 1875,” History of Psychiatry, Dec
1992; vol. 3: pp. 431 - 455.

Andrew Blewett and Alain Bottéro, “L.-V. Marcé and the psychopathology of eating
disorders,” History of Psychiatry, Mar 1995; vol. 6: pp. 69 - 85.

JJ Brumberg, Fasting Girls, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1988

7. Criminal Insanity

Primary sources: Forbes Winslow, The legal doctrine of responsibility in cases of insanity,
connected with alleged criminal acts (1858)

H. Maudsley, Criminal Responsibility in Relation to Insanity, Journal of Mental Science, Oct

1895; 41: 657 - 674.

Charles Mercier, Crime and Insanity, London, Williams & Norgate, 1911 (selections).

Selected reports from Journal of Mental Science

Readings:

Roger Smith, Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials, Edinburgh UP,
1981.

Joel Eigen, Witnessing Insanity, Yale UP, 1995.

Joel Eigen, Unconscious Crime, Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.

Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England, vol. 1, Edinburgh UP, 1968.

Jerome Hall, “Psychiatry and Criminal Responsibility,” The Yale Law Journal, 65, 1956, pp.
761-785.

Charles Rosenberg, The Trial of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Guilded
Age. The University of Chicago Press, 1968
8. Colonial psychiatry

Primary sources:

J. C. Carothers, “Frontal Lobe Function and the African,” Journal of Mental Science, 97,
1951, pp. 12-48

H. M Shelley and W. H. Watson, “An Investigation Concerning Mental Disorder in

Nyasaland,” Journal of Mental Science, 82, 1936, pp. 701-730

H. L. Gordon, “The Mental Capacity of the African: A Paper Read before the African Circle,”
Journal of the Royal African Society, 33, 1934, pp. 226-242

JHT Walsh, “Hemp drugs and insanity,” Journal of Mental Science, 40, 1894, pp. 21–36

Raymond Prince, The Changing Picture of Depressive Syndromes in Africa: Is It Fact or

Diagnostic Fashion? Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1967

Readings:

Waltraud Ernst, “Asylum Provision and the East India Company,” Medical History, 42, 1998,
476-502.

Waltraud Ernst, “Colonial Psychiatry,” in G Berrios and H Freeman, eds, 150 Years of British
Psychiatry: 1841-1858 (Gaskell, 1991)

James Mills, Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: the 'native only' lunatic asylums of British
India , 1857 to 1900, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000

Jonathon Sadowsky, “Psychiatry and Colonial Ideology in Nigeria,” Bulletin of the History of
Medicine, 71, 1997, pp. 94-111.

RC Keller, “Pinel in the Maghreb: liberation, confinement, and psychiatric reform in French
North Africa,” Bulletin for the History of Medicine, 79, 2005, pp. 459-99.

Megan Vaughan. “Idioms of Madness: Zomba Lunatic Asylum, Nyasaland, in the Colonial
Period,” Journal of Southern African Studies, 9, 1983, pp. 218-38

Jock McCulloch., “The Empire’s New Clothes: Ethnopsychiatry in Colonial Africa,” History of
the Human Sciences, 6, 1993), pp. 35-52.

Jock McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry and ‘the African Mind’, Cambridge UP, 1995

9. Culture-Bound Syndromes

Primary sources:

“Culture-Bound Syndromes”, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders,

American Psychiatric Association, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric
Association, 1994

P.M. Yap, “Koro - a culture-bound depersonalization syndrome,” British Journal of

Psychiatry, 111, 1965, pp. 43-50
Charles Mather, “Accusations of Genital Theft: A Case from Northern Ghana,” Culture
Medicine and Psychiatry, 29, 2005, p. 33

R.N. Bloor, “Whizz-Dick: side effect, urban myth or amfetamine-related koro-like syndrome?”
International Journal of Clinical Practice, 58, 2004, pp. 717–719

Readings:

Peter J. Guarnaccia & Lloyd Rogler, “Research on Culture-Bound Syndromes: New

Directions,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 156, 1999, pp. 1322–1327

WG Jilek, “Psychiatric Disorders: Culture-specific,” International Encyclopedia of the Social

and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier Science Ltd., 2001

Kleinman, A.: Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. N.Y.:
Free Press, 1988.

Kleinman, A.: Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the
Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Berkeley: University of
California
Press, 1980.

Kleinman, A.: Depression, somatization and the new cross-cultural psychiatry. Soc Sci and
Med. 11:3-10.

10. Summing Up: interpretive issues

Readings:

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, New York,
Vintage Books, 1973

Michel Foucault, Psychiatric power: lectures form the College de France, 1973-74, Palgrave,
2006

Michael Foucault, ‘What is Enlightenment?’ and ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, both in

Rabinow (ed.) The Michel Foucault Reader, Vintage, 1984

Ian Hacking, Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illness, University
of Virginia Press, 1998

Ian Hacking, ‘Making Up People’, in T. Heller et al. (eds.), Reconstructing Individualism,

Stanford University Press, l986, 222-236. Reprinted in Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology,
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002, 99-114.

Ian Hacking, “Kinds of People: Moving Targets,” at:

http://www.britac.ac.uk/pubs/src/britacad06/index.cfm