© 1997 by Society for the Social History of Medicine
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Discussion Point |
Getting Out of the Asylum: Understanding the Confinement of the Insanc in the Nineteenth Century
*Department of History, University of Nottingham University Park, Nottingham, NG7 R2D, UK
SUMMARY This paper circtically re-examines our assumptions about the social role of aslums in the nineteenth Century by separating the history of the confinement from the history of psychiattry. Rather than medical superintendents being central to the admission of patients, this paper will argue that control over confinement was predicated upon desires of families to care for any control dependent and violent relatives The confinement of the insane can this be seen not as a consequence of a professionalizing psychiatric elite, but rather as a strategic response of households to the stresses of industrialization. The second part of this paper surveys changing approaches to the social history of the asylum and directs these techniques to a combination of institutional and non-institutional sources which will shed new light on the dynamic between informal patterns of family caring‘in the community’ and formal medical treatment in purpose-built institutions. Having set out the methodological possibilities of using new types of admission records, the last section of this paper explores different approaches to the history of the family and applies them to the question of why the insane were confirmed. This will provide an analytical framework understanding the interface between the family and the formal medical institution.Throughout, this paper draws on more than three dozen international studies to illuminate some comparative aspects of confinement in different national contexts.
Keywords: asylums; confinement; psychiatry; family; insane; nineteenth century
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  A. McCarthy Ethnicity, Migration and the Lunatic Asylum in Early Twentieth-Century Auckland, New Zealand Soc Hist Med, April 1, 2008; 21(1): 47 - 65. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
F. Condrau The Patient's View Meets the Clinical Gaze Soc Hist Med, December 1, 2007; 20(3): 525 - 540. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
W. Ernst Beyond East and West. From the History of Colonial Medicine to a Social History of Medicine(s) in South Asia Soc Hist Med, December 1, 2007; 20(3): 505 - 524. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
L. Wannell Patients' Relatives and Psychiatric Doctors: Letter Writing in the York Retreat, 1875 1910 Soc Hist Med, August 1, 2007; 20(2): 297 - 313. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 E. O'Sullivan and I. O'Donnell Coercive confinement in the Republic of Ireland: The waning of a culture of control Punishment Society, January 1, 2007; 9(1): 27 - 48. [Abstract] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
C. Coleborne Families, Patients and Emotions: Asylums for the Insane in Colonial Australia and New Zealand, c. 1880-1910 Soc Hist Med, December 1, 2006; 19(3): 425 - 442. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
R. Ellis The Asylum, the Poor Law, and a Reassessment of the Four-Shilling Grant: Admissions to the County Asylums of Yorkshire in the Nineteenth Century Soc Hist Med, April 1, 2006; 19(1): 55 - 71. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 J. E. Moran The Signal and the Noise: The Historical Epidemiology of Insanity in Ante-Bellum New Jersey History of Psychiatry, September 1, 2003; 14(3): 281 - 301. [Abstract] [PDF]
|
|