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The Mental Patient in History

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The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences

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Abstract

This chapter aims to throw light on the multifaceted and contested terrain of the mental patient in history and to bring into focus the strengths and weaknesses of the diverse kinds of knowledge-making that have gathered around the trajectories of distressed psyches. Though the histories of mental patients may sometimes occupy an adversarial, or antagonistic, relationship to psychiatric orthodoxies, equally they may provide the stimulus for new epistemologies within psychiatry. The discussion ranges widely across a number of disciplines, notably anthropology, psychiatry, psychology, and history, and engages with creative artists, writers, and activists, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Daniel Paul Schreber, Bessie Head, Friedrich Krauss, Dimitri Tsafendas, Rodrigo Souza Leao, and Lemn Sissay. A critical concept in this discussion is that of precarity which names a politically induced condition under which certain groups may become differentially exposed to injury and suffering. Topics considered include psychopathology, art, and politics, notably the contribution and significance of art historian Hans Prinzhorn; the double jeopardy of race and insanity; and the exploration of how reflections on action and suffering may become a window on the times in which protagonists live, revealing how “things of the soul” are inextricably inwoven with “questions of power.” The precariousness of the psyche in the power fields of history is also illustrated on a wider canvas, at the level of the changes and conditions that affect a whole society in a given period, notably China, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union/Russian Federation, so as to highlight dimensions of what has been described as the politics of social suffering.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. London, UK

    Peter Barham

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  1. Peter Barham
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Correspondence to Peter Barham .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    David McCallum

Section Editor information

  1. Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Humboldt Universität, Berlin, Germany

    Eric J. Engstrom

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Barham, P. (2022). The Mental Patient in History. In: McCallum, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7255-2_90

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