Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and German Society, 1815-1849How did the affliction we now know as insanity move from a religious phenomenon to a medical one? How did social class, gender, and ethnicity affect the experience of mental trauma and the way psychiatrists diagnosed and treated patients? In answering these questions, this important volume mines the rich and unusually detailed records of one of Germany's first modern insane asylums, the Eberbach Asylum in the duchy of Nassau. It is a book on the historical relationship between madness and modernity that both builds upon and challenges Michel Foucault's landmark work on this topic, a bold study that gives generous consideration to madness from the patient's perspective while also shedding new light on sexuality, politics, and antisemitism in nineteenth-century Germany. Drawing on the case records of several hundred asylum patients, Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness reconstructs the encounters of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness and deviancy during a transitional period in the history of both Germany and psychiatry. As author Ann Goldberg explains, this era witnessed the establishment of psychiatry as a legitimate medical specialty during a time of social upheaval, as Germany underwent the shift toward a capitalist order and the modern state. Focusing on such "illnesses" as religious madness, nymphomania, and masturbatory insanity, as well as the construct of Jewishness, she probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted within the settings of family, village, and insane asylum. The book is a model of microhistory, breaking new ground in the historiography of psychiatry as it synthetically applies approaches from "the history of everyday life," anthropology, poststructuralism, and feminist studies. In contrast to earlier, anecdotal studies of "the asylum patient," Goldberg employs diagnostic patterns to illuminate the ways in which madness--both in psychiatric practice and in the experience of patients--was structured by gender, class, and "race." She thus examines both the social basis of rural mental trauma in the Vormärz and the political and medical practices that sought to refashion this experience. This study sheds light on a range of issues concerning gender, religion, class relations, ethnicity, and state-building. It will appeal to students and scholars of a number of disciplines. |
Contents
The Duchy of Nassau and the Eberbach Asylum | |
Culture Politics and | |
Religious Madness and the Formation of Patients | |
Nymphomania | |
The Practices of Nymphomania | |
Women Sex and Rural Life | |
Masturbatory Insanity and Delinquency | |
Jews and the Criminalization of Madness | |
Conclusion | |
Abbreviations | |
Index | |
Other editions - View all
Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and ... Ann Goldberg Limited preview - 2001 |
Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and ... Ann Goldberg Limited preview - 1999 |
Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and ... Ann Goldberg No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham acts alienists Alltagsgeschichte Anna’s anti-Semitism appear asylum staff authorities Basting behavior belief body bourgeois bourgeoisie cause Christian Christine’s church clothes commitment report concept conscience context correctional house criminal culture dangerous delinquency desire deviancy diagnosis doctor Eberbach Eberbach asylum Eberbach sources economic Elisabeth enlightened erotomania fact female Foucault gender genitals German Heinrich honor HStAW husband hypersexuality Ibid illegitimacy incarceration inmates insane asylum institutional Jewish patients Jews Johann later liberal Lindpaintner to Nassau literature lower-class male man-craziness marriage masturbation masturbatory insanity medical log medical official medical report mental illness mental medicine middle-class mind modern moral moral treatment Mordachai Nassau government nature nineteenth century norms nymphomania onanism one’s pathology peasant person physicians pietist political poor prison problem promiscuity psychiatry psychic punishment rational rationalist raving reform religion religious madness role rural Schultheiß sexual social society super-ego supernatural superstition symptoms treatment village Vormärz Windt woman women