Work, psychiatry and society, c. 1750-2015

by Waltraud Ernst (Editor)

Overview

This book offers the first systematic critical appraisal of the uses of work and work therapy in psychiatric institutions across the globe, from the late eighteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Contributors explore the daily routine in psychiatric institutions and ask whether work was therapy, part of a regime of punishment or a means of exploiting free labour. By focusing on mental patients’ day-to-day life in closed institutions, the authors fill a gap in the history of psychiatric regimes. The geographical scope is wide, ranging from Northern America to Japan, India and Western as well as Eastern Europe, and the authors engage with broad historical questions, such as the impact of colonialism and communism and the effect of the World Wars. The book presents an alternative history of the emergence of occupational therapy and will be of interest not only to academics in the fields of history and sociology but also to health professionals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719097690
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2016
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Waltraud Ernst is Professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University

Table of Contents

List of figures vii

List of contributors ix

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction: Therapy and empowerment, coercion and punishment. Historical and contemporary perspectives on work, psychiatry and society Waltraud Ernst 1

1 The role of work in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century treatises on moral treatment in France, Tuscany and Britain Jane Freebody 31

2 Therapeutic work and mental illness in America, c. 1830-1970 Ben Harris 55

3 Travails of madness: New Jersey, 1800-70 James Moran 77

4 From blasting powder to tomato pickles: Patient work at the provincial mental hospitals in British Columbia, Canada, 1885-1920 Kathryn McKay 99

5 'Useful both to the patients as well as to the State': Patient work in colonial mental hospitals in South Asia, c. 1818-1948 Waltraud Ernst 117

6 'A powerful agent in their recovery': Work as treatment in British West Indian lunatic asylums, 1860-1910 Leonard Smith 142

7 Work and activity in mental hospitals in modern Japan, c. 1868-2000 Akira Hashimoto 163

8 Patient work and family care at Iwakura, Japan, c. 1799-1970 Osama Nakamura 182

9 Work and occupation in Romanian psychiatry, c. 1838-1945 Valentin-Veron Toma 194

10 Between therapeutic instrument and exploitation of labour force: Patient work in rural asylums in Württemberg, c. 1810-1945 Thomas Muller 220

11 The patient's view of work therapy: The mental hospital Hamburg-Langenhorn during the Weimar Republic Monika Ankele 238

12 They were 'improved', punished and cured: The construction of 'workshy', 'industrious' and (non-)compliant inmates in forced labour facilities in the First Republic of Austria between 1918 and 1938 Sonja Hinsch 262

13 Useful members of society or motiveless malingerers? Occupation and malingering in British asylum psychiatry, 1870-1914 Sarah Chaney 277

14 Work and the Irish District Asylums during the late nineteenth century Oonagh Walsh 298

15 From work and occupation to occupational therapy: The policies of professionalisation in English mental hospitals from 1919 to 1959 John Hall 314

16 Work is therapy? The function of employment in British psychiatric care after 1959 Vicky Long 334

17 The hollow gardener and other stories: Reason and relation in the work cure Jennifer Laws 351

Index 368

Editorial Reviews

Overall, this volume is an eye-opener. It breaks new ground in clarifying questions of history of psychiatry by focusing on the role of work in mental-health institutions. It contains some first-rate chapters for historians of medicine and psychiatry, social and economic historians and sociologists. It will also inform students, healthcare pro­fessionals and, hopefully, the administrators of medical institutions.'
Felicitas Söhner, Universität Ulm (DE), Gesnerus 73 May 2016

‘For all the sophistication of the arguments put forward, the introduction and the chapters that follow are very easy to read, making them accessible to a wide audience and hopefully a core text for students being introduced to the history of asylums.’ - Pamela Dale, University of Exeter, The Economic History Review

‘In this volume, Waltraud Ernst has brought together 17 essays with great skill. Together, they demonstrate how ‘work’ with its myriad meanings has different significance – treatment, punishment, reform, exploitation, empowerment – within shifting conditions brought about by colonialism, revolution, war, economic change, and new medical ideologies. The collection makes a great temporal and geographical sweep across the entire modern period to the present day, addressing attitudes and praxis in North America, Japan, India, and Western and Eastern Europe…It will be of interest to historians of medicine and psychiatry, labour and economics, as well as to sociologists, anthropologists, and healthcare professionals.’
Louise Hide, Birkbeck, UCL, History of the human sciences, November 2016

‘Work, Psychiatry, and Society, c. 1750–2015, marks a welcome advance in the historiography of madness by placing psychiatricpatients’ work as a topic of central importance that deserves further scholarly attention.’
Geoffrey Reaume, Isis Journal, June 2017

From the Publisher