History of Psychiatry

Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics

by Carol Tilley

Forthcoming in Information & Culture: A Journal of History.

Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent serve as historical and cultural touchstones... more Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent serve as historical and cultural touchstones of the anti-comics movement in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Although there have been persistent concerns about the clinical evidence Wertham used as the basis for Seduction, his sources were made widely available only in 2010. This paper documents specific examples of how Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain.

From the Problem of the Nature of Psychosis to the Phenomenological Reform of Psychiatry. Historical and Epistemological Remarks on Ludwig Binswanger’s Psychiatric Project, Medicine Studies, 2012 (DOI) 10.1007/s12376-012-0076-x

by Elisabetta Basso

This paper focuses on one of the original moments of the development of the “phenomenological” current of psychiatry,... more This paper focuses on one of the original moments of the development of the “phenomenological” current of psychiatry, namely, the psychopathological research of Ludwig Binswanger. By means of the clinical and conceptual problem of schizophrenia as it was conceived and developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, I will try to outline and analyze Binswanger’s perspective from a both historical and epistemological point of view. Binswanger’s own way means of approaching and conceiving schizophrenia within the scientific, medical, and psychiatric context of that time will lead us to grasp the epistemological stakes at the origins of his project of reforming psychiatry by means of phenomenology. I will finally attempt to upgrade and update Binswanger’s project in light of the current reappraisal of phenomenology within the ongoing debate on psychopathology engaged by studies in the field of science and philosophy of mind.

Walter Freeman: Cortical Cowboy with an Ice-pick

by Martin Huncovsky

Draft only. Written as a part of course assignment.

Tobino, Basaglia e la legge 180: storia di una polemica

by Primo De Vecchis

Published in M. TOBINO, "Gli ultimi giorni di Magliano", Introduzione di M. Zappella, Cronologia e bibliografia di P. Italia, a cura di P. De Vecchis e M. Marchi, Milano, Mondadori, 2009, pp. LI-LXXV.

Antonin Artaud et la traversée du miroir : une "expérience de langage"

by Maxime Philippe

Congrès international des spécialistes d’études en langue française des XXe-XXIe siècles, Long Beach, CA, 29-31 mars.

Was he queer...or just Irish? Reading the life of Harry Stack Sullivan

by Peter Hegarty

Keywords: Harry Stack Sullivan.  Biogrpahy.  History of Psychology.  Gender. Sexulaity.  Irish-American studies.  Intersectional theory.

This paper examines Helen Swick Perry's (1982) biography of the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan.  Sullivan's... more This paper examines Helen Swick Perry's (1982) biography of the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan.  Sullivan's life and works are briefly reviewed.  In contrast to other gay-affirmative writing on Sullivan, my reading attends to Perry's ciations of Irish-American identity and Catholic upbringing in the presentation of both Sullivan and his aunt Margaret Stack as lonely, loveless, Irish heterosexuals, a preseatnation which obscures these gay and lesbian lives.  I conclude with an anti-essentialist argument drawn from Sullivan's own writings to avoid essentialist readings of the relationship between his life's events and the meaning of his works. 

Tobino medico di manicomio attraverso il Diario

by Primo De Vecchis

Draft only

Horvath, M.A.H., Hegarty, P., Tyler, S. & Mansfield, S. (in press). "Lights on at the end of the party": Are lads' mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism? British Journal of Psychology.

by Peter Hegarty

Research has suggested that some magazines targeted at young men –lads’ mags– are normalizing extreme sexist views by... more Research has suggested that some magazines targeted at young men –lads’ mags– are normalizing extreme sexist views by presenting those views in a mainstream context. Consistent with this view, young men in Study 1 (n= 90) identified more with derogatory quotes about women drawn from recent lads’ mags, and from interviews with convicted rapists, when those quotes were attributed to lads’ mags, than when they were attributed to convicted rapists. In Study 2, 40 young women and men could not reliably judge the source of those same quotes. While these participants sometimes voiced the belief that the content of lads’ mags was ‘normal’ while rapists’ talk was ‘extreme’, they categorized quotes from both sources as derogatory with equal frequency. Jointly, the two studies show an overlap in the content of convicted rapists’ talk and the contents of contemporary lads’ mags, and suggest that the framing of such content within lads’ mags may normalize it for young men.

Psicoanálisis y pedagogía. Un análisis de las Actas de la Sociedad Psicoanalítica de Viena (1906-1923)

by Mauro Vallejo

Vallejo, M. (2008), “Psicoanálisis y pedagogía. Un análisis de las Actas de la Sociedad Psicoanalítica de Viena (1906-1923)”, Anuario de Investigaciones. Facultad de Psicología (UBA), Volumen XV, Tomo II, pp. 179-186

This work describes the presence of pedagogic problems
in the records of the debates held by the viennese more This work describes the presence of pedagogic problems
in the records of the debates held by the viennese
psychoanalysts during the first two decades of the last
century. This text begins with some considerations about
the so called reception studies and proposes an examination
of the hypothesis and sentences that Freud and
his disciples made about the children education -and
fundamentally about the sexual enlightenment- during
the wednesday meetings. Consequently, the article remarks
that those sentences were a continuation of a
concern about the relationships inside the family and the
function of other socialization institutions

Paradojas y éxitos de una empresa imposible: Análisis de Traité philosophique et physiologique de l'hérédité naturelle (1847-1850) de Prosper Lucas

by Mauro Vallejo

Psicoanálisis y eugenesia: Apuntes para una historia olvidada. El ejemplo de Rudolf von Urbantschitsch

by Mauro Vallejo

Vallejo, M. (2010) “Psicoanálisis y eugenesia: Apuntes para una historia olvidada. El ejemplo de Rudolf von Urbantschitsch”, Memorias del  II Congreso Internacional de Investigación y Práctica Profesional en Psicología - XVII Jornadas de Investigación y Sexto Encuentro de Investigadores en Psicología del Mercosur. Facultad de Psicología, Tomo IV, pp. 403-405, ISSN 1667-6750.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the intellectual development of a secondary participant of
the early... more The purpose of this paper is to analyze the intellectual development of a secondary participant of
the early history of psychoanalysis: Rudolf von Urbantschitsch (1879-1964), a Viennese doctor that
in 1908 entered to the Wednesday Psychological Society, and who during his long life used usually
the freudian concepts. On several occasions this psychoanalyst accepted the use of eugenical
practices. The goal of this communication is to describe the reasoning he showed, and demonstrate
that the combination between psychoanalysis and eugenics was not an isolated fact.

El Prix Civrieux de 1843 y los primeros trabajos sobre herencia de las enfermedades mentales

by Mauro Vallejo

The purpose of this work is to analyze the appearance of the first French publications dealing with the heredity of... more The purpose of this work is to analyze the appearance of the first French publications dealing with the heredity of mental illnesses. As it has been shown by others scholars, France was the country where the hereditarian subject was specially observed from a medical point of view. From 1850 a great part of the alienist profession considered that the heredity was a essential component of the mental pathologies. Nevertheless, few scholars have described the forerunners of that tradition. On that sense, this paper deal with the works that E. Gintrac and A Gaussail sent to the contest sponsored by the Académie Royale de Médecine in 1843. Both works were published in 1845 and they are the first publications that deal entirely with the role played by heredity on the production of madness.

The mental asylum of San Servolo, Venice (1860—1978), History of Psychiatry, 20-4, 2009, p. 511

by Elisabetta Basso

Co-authored with Mario Galzigna; Egidio Priani; Simone Botti,

In autumn 2006, Professor Mario Galzigna (Department of Historical Studies, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice) started a... more In autumn 2006, Professor Mario Galzigna (Department of Historical Studies, Ca’ Foscari University, Venice) started a historical-epistemological research project at the Archives of the Foundation IRSESC (Social and Cultural Emargination Research and Studies Institute: http://www.fondazionesanservolo.it/html/
fondazione.asp), formerly seat of the old mental asylum of Venice (which closed on 13 August 1978 after 250 years).
The Foundation’s heritage comprises a very large archive including the following sections: administrative; sanitary; accounting; photographic. In addition, it includes the book collections of the old psychiatric hospitals of San Servolo,
San Clemente (feminine section: 1873–1987) and provincial civil Hospital SS. Giovanni e Paolo of Venice (mental hospital section). There is also material relating to San Servolo’s pharmacy.
The main aim of the research so far – by means of a systematic examination of a selection of clinical records – has been the reconstruction of the psychiatric apparatus of San Servolo from 1840 to 1904, in its multiple forms, and the analysis of the network of relations between the asylum and other main institutions, with particular attention to those with political, sanitary and judicial power in the Veneto region of the period.
Now we would like to enlarge the perspective of this research by setting the psychiatric experience of San Servolo into the historical, institutional and scientifi c European context from the point of view of both psychiatric practice and clinical nosography (evolution in diagnostical approaches; assessment of the
infl uence of European scientifi c production on these practices and theories).
At present, we are looking for European or non-European sponsors and partners and fi nancial support in order to continue our work in a wider, international perspective and context.

Metaphors & Meaning

by Andrea Kalvesmaki

The Springfield Somnambulist: Or, The End of the Enlightenment in America

by Benjamin Reiss

Bardolatry in Bedlam: Shakespeare, Psychiatry, and Cultural Authority in Nineteenth-Century America

by Benjamin Reiss

Letters from Asylumia: The Opal and the Cultural Work of the Lunatic Asylum, 1851-1860

by Benjamin Reiss

‘The Freud Franchise: Independence of Mind in India and Japan’, in R. Clarke (ed), Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Power and Representation in (Post) Colonial Cultures (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009)

by Christopher Harding

'The Emergence of 'Christian Psychiatry' in Post-Independence India', Edinburgh Papers in South Asian Studies, 24 (2011)

by Christopher Harding

«Le rêve comme argument» Les enjeux épistémologiques à l'origine du projet psychiatrique de Ludwig Binswanger, Archives de Philosophie, 73-4, 2010, pp. 655-686

by Elisabetta Basso

For the most part, nowadays studies in the field of « phenomenological psychiatry » draw a sharp distinction between... more For the most part, nowadays studies in the field of « phenomenological psychiatry » draw a sharp distinction between historical, philosophical, and clinical approaches. This paper aims at opening up the field for an epistemological history, which brings out the problems at stake at the origin of the methodological model that Ludwig Binswanger elaborated for psychiatry in the first decades of the 20th century. For this reason we focus on a Binswager’s work of 1928 : The Dream : Changes in its Concept and Interpretation from Greeks to the Present. This work introduces us to the psychiatric and psychological context within which Binswanger dwells upon the problem of methodology in the field of psychopathology. But it also shows us the role that the questioning of dream played for Binswanger’s epistemological reception of philosophical phenomenology.