Psychological Classification and Diagnosis in Asylum Statistics, 1800 - 1948: The British Table of the Forms of Insanity

by Kevin Matthew Jones

Overview

This book provides a detailed examination of the questions that preoccupied British alienists throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Was insanity one disorder with different forms or a set of distinct natural kinds that each had different causes, symptoms, and outlooks? Was it possible to devise a standardised classification of the insanities that provides a scientific basis to psychological diagnosis? Could statistics on psychological diagnosis provide data to help reveal the nature of insanity?

The classification at the centre of these debates, the Medico-Psychological Association’s Table of the Forms of Insanity, caused deep divisions that took decades to resolve and hampered efforts to develop asylum medical statistics on psychological diagnosis. The use of the classification in national medical statistics was tantamount to being the standard classification for the asylum. As the appeal of statistics grew within medical circles, the debates intensified, and the divisions grew deeper. Despite lofty aims and years of debate, attempts to develop national statistics on psychological diagnosis had achieved very little by the beginning of the twentieth century. The failure of these efforts, hampered by the unwieldy processes adopted by Lunacy administration, led to the Table of the Forms falling into obscurity after its final set of revisions in 1932.

In presenting for the first time the debates surrounding the Table of the Forms of Insanity, this volume calls for a re-evaluation of the history of psychiatric classification through its exploration of the underappreciated links between the standardisation of psychological diagnosis and the development of mental health statistics. By interrogating the links between asylum governance and the clinic, this book presents considerations on classification that still resound today, and provides valuable reading for scholars interested in the social history of medicine, the history of psychiatry, and the history of science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031461538
Publisher:	Springer Nature Switzerland
Publication date:	03/31/2025
Series:	Mental Health in Historical Perspective
Edition description:	2024
Pages:	355
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Kevin Matthew Jones is a lecturer in the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Leeds, UK. He has conducted research on factors shaping public data and the modern history of medicine at the National Archives and the University of Birmingham. Additionally, he has published research on the history of psychology, the history of medicine, and the integrated history and philosophy of science.

Table of Contents

Introduction.- 1. The Beginnings of a British Standard Classification, c. 1845-1860.- 2. Statistics, Causal Explanations of Insanity and Revisions to the Standard Classification: Medico-Psychological Association Debates c.1860-1882.- 3. ‘A Higgledy Piggledy Conglomeration’: Prognosis and the ‘Proto-Kraepelinian’ Standard Classification c.1902-1906.- 4. Heterogeneity and Crisis: The Final Series of Revisions to the Standard Classification c.1928-1932.- 5. The International Influence of the British Standard Classification During the Interwar Years.- 6. Globalisation, Imperialism and the World Health Organisation’s Classification: The End of the ‘Mesozoic’ British Standard Classification: c.1938-1960.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Kevin Jones's book provides the first detailed reconstruction of the nineteenth and twentieth-century debates about psychiatric classification. These classifications are now foundational to the ways we see ourselves and our relationships with others, so much so that it is difficult to imagine life without them. Problems in the workplace, classroom or family home are often framed through reference to putative psychiatric diagnoses or psychological conditions. This transformation has been widely commented upon, but an overarching historical analysis of these categories has been absent. Moving from the Victorian statistical Tables of Insanity through to the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases, Jones presents a thoughtful and intelligent analysis of the medical debates that ground the identities we live with in Britain today.” (Rhodri Hayward, Reader, Queen Mary University London)

“Kevin Jones’ fascinating account of a century of debate on how to do this sheds light on problems that endure today. The media give supposed psychiatric classifications, like the American Diagnostic and Statistics Manual (DSM), extensive coverage in debates about mental illness. DSM looks like a classification system that makes mental illness a part of medicine but it’s not. It’s a dictionary of symptoms or collections of symptoms. For nearly two centuries there has been a confusing divide between dictionaries and classifications, beginning with the Table of Forms put in place to track outcomes and value for money in British asylums.” (David Healy, Professor of Psychiatry, Bangor University)