This book offers something new in the history of psychiatry. Within a transnational research framework, it presents original historical case studies and conceptual reflections on comparative and related methodologies. Systematic comparison and transfer studies as well as aspects of entangled history are employed in relation to themes such as different cultural meanings pertaining to the same term; transfer of treatment practices and institutional regimes; localised practices and (re)-emerging forms of patient care; circulation of early anti-psychiatrists’ views; impact of war and politics on patients’ welfare and on psychiatric discourse; and diversification of psychotherapeutic and physical practices. The book includes chapters on the history and historiography of psychiatry and psychotherapy in different geo-cultural regions in South America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe. The contributors present multilayered interpretations, emphasising commonalities and interconnections as well as contrasts and discontinuities. With its wide-ranging geographical focus and attention to conceptual issues, this collection will assist to integrate and reconfigure the historiography of psychiatry.

This book is the first to explore memory, misremembering, forgetting, and anniversaries in the history of psychiatry and mental health. It challenges simplistic representations of the callous nature of mental health care in the past, while at the same time eschewing a celebratory and uncritical marking of anniversaries and individuals. Asking critical questions of the early Whiggish histories of mental health care, the book problematizes the idea of a shared professional and institutional history, and the abiding faith placed in the reform of medicine, administration, and even patients. It contends that much post-1800 legislation drafted to ensure reform, acted to preserve beliefs about the ‘bad old days’ and a ‘brighter future’ in the state memories of imperial powers, which in turn exported these notions around the world. Conversely, the collection demonstrates the variety of remembering and forgetting, building on recent interest in the ideological and cultural linkages between past and present in international psychiatric practice. In this way, it seeks to trace the pathways of memory, exploring the direction of travel, and the perpetuation, remodeling, and uprooting of recollection. Chapter “The New Socialist Citizen and ‘Forgetting’ Authoritarianism: Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Revolution in Socialist Yugoslavia” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer. com.

This volume explores the history and historiography of madness from the ancient and medieval worlds to the present day. Covering Africa, Asia and South America as well as Europe and North America, chapters discuss broad topics such as the representation of madness in literature and the visual arts, the material culture of madness, madness within life histories and the increased globalization of knowledge and treatment practices. Chronologically and geographically wide-ranging and providing a fascinating overview of the current state of the field, this is essential reading for all students of the history of madness, mental health, psychiatry and medicine.

This book explores the relationship between socialist psychiatry and political ideology during the Cold War, tracing Yugoslav ‘psy’ sciences as they experienced multiple internationalisations and globalisations in the post-WWII period. These unique transnational connections – with West, East and South – remain at the centre of this book. The author argues that the ‘psy’ disciplines provide a window onto the complications of Cold War internationalism, offering an opportunity to re-think postwar Europe's internal dynamics. She tells an alternative, pan-European narrative of the post-1945 period, demonstrating that, in the Cold War, there existed sites of collaboration and vigorous exchange between the two ideologically opposed camps, and places like Yugoslavia provided a meeting point, where ideas, frameworks and professional and cultural networks from both sides of the Iron Curtain could overlap and transform each other. Moreover, the book offers the first analysis of East European psychiatrists’ contacts with and contributions to the decolonizing world, exploring their participation in broader political discussions about decolonization, anti-imperialism and non-alignment. The Yugoslav brand of East-West psychoanalysis and psychotherapy bred a truly unique intellectual framework, which enabled psychiatrists to think through a set of political and ideological dilemmas regarding the relationship between individuals and social structures. This book offers a thorough reinterpretation of the notion of ‘communist psychiatry’ as a tool used solely for political oppression, and instead emphasises the political interventions of East European psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

This collection examines psychiatric medicine in China across the early modern and modern periods. Essays focus on the diagnosis, treatment and cultural implications of madness and mental illness and explore the complex trajectory of the medicalization of the mind in shifting political contexts of Chinese history.

Examines psychiatric epidemiology's unique evolution, conceptually and socially, within and between diverse regions and cultures, underscoring its growing influence on the biopolitics of nations and worldwide health campaigns.

The medicalisation of alcohol use has become a prominent discourse that guides policy makers and impacts public perceptions of alcohol and drinking. This book maps the historical and cultural dimensions of the phenomenon. Emphasising medical attitudes and theories regarding alcohol and the changing perception of alcohol consumption in psychiatry and mental health, it explores the shift from the use of alcohol in clinical treatment and as part of dietary regimens to the emergence of alcoholism as a disease category that requires medical intervention and is considered a threat to public health.