{"title":"From couch to camp: Psychoanalysis, refugeedom and the making of international mental health in the career of Maria Pfister-Ammende.","authors":"Baher Ibrahim","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261489738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X261489738","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article establishes the intersection of psychiatry and refugeedom as an area of historiographical inquiry. It traces how psychoanalysis was refracted through the paradigm of interwar mental hygiene and rescaled to a community level in the post-Second World War refugee camp, thereby contributing to the genesis of postwar international mental health. I examine the career of the Swiss Maria Pfister-Ammende from psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, to director of a refugee psychotherapeutic service in refugee camps in Switzerland, to international mental health expert at the World Health Organization. I situate her attempt at codifying an 'uprooting neurosis' within the genealogy of the medicalization of mobility and migration from nostalgia in the late 17th century to trauma in the late 20th. Implications for the historiography of refugee psychiatry and global mental health are considered.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"957154X261489738"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149217059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Incomplete Bergson: Memory, Minkowski, and the Foundations of Phenomenological Psychiatry.","authors":"Rob Sips","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261486069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X261486069","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Disturbances of temporality have long been central to phenomenological accounts of psychosis. Yet the conceptual resources used to frame these disturbances have been shaped-in specific ways-by Eugène Minkowski's selective appropriation of Henri Bergson's philosophy. This article reconstructs what was left unexplored in that inheritance: not a theoretical detail but something close to the heart of the matter-Bergson's insistence that memory is not a layer added to perception but the very medium in which perception occurs. Drawing on Bergson's <i>Matter and Memory</i> and <i>Mind-Energy</i>, and tracing the historical conditions under which Minkowski's foundational synthesis left this dimension aside, the article suggests that the self-disorder tradition and desynchronisation accounts, for all their sophistication, have worked with a Bergson from whom a crucial dimension was missing-one whose recovery opens onto dimensions these frameworks have not yet fully explored: the memorial constitution of selfhood, the existential unbuilding that follows its dysregulation, the aha and anti-aha dialectic that characterises psychotic onset, and a recovery understood not as restoration but as re-temporalisation-the gradual reconstitution of the perception-memory-action synthesis through embodied and intersubjective re-engagement with the world.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"957154X261486069"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149012888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A psychiatrist's life divided by exile: Reidentifying Wilhelm Mayer (1887-1956), author of the 1921 follow-up study of Paraphrenia.","authors":"Ayumu Kocha, Hiroki Kocha","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261483933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X261483933","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article reidentifies Wilhelm Mayer, author of the 1921 follow-up study of Kraepelin's cases of paraphrenia, and reconstructs his professional life across its German and American phases. Although Mayer's 1921 paper is still cited in the history of the concept of paraphrenia, the background of its author long remained obscure, and in recent literature he has at times been identified as Wilhelm Mayer-Gross, an attribution that provided the starting point for the present investigation. By collating published sources, dissertation records, obituaries, professional-society records, immigration records and local historical materials, this study examined whether the Mayer who worked in Tübingen and Munich was the same person as the William/Wilhelm Mayer who emigrated to the United States in 1936 and practised in New York. The evidence indicates that they were the same person: Wilhelm Mayer (1887-1956), who worked within the network linking Kraepelin, Gaupp and Brodmann before going into exile in the United States. A key piece of evidence is the identification of a 1911 dissertation on the prognosis of general paresis, rather than the 1901 dissertation previously attributed to him. Mayer's case shows how exile fragmented the documentary record of a career spanning Germany and the United States. His American career was predominantly clinical but continued to include scholarly work; nevertheless, the separation of the German and American records made it difficult for later historians of psychiatry to recognise them as belonging to the same person. The article thus offers a case for rethinking the history of the post-1933 emigration of German-speaking psychiatrists and neurologists in terms of fragmented professional careers and the asymmetry of documentary records.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"957154X261483933"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148913772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychiatryPub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-03-06DOI: 10.1177/0957154X261427332
Gabriel Lawson
{"title":"Barbed wire disease: British medical and lay prisoners of war and their perceptions of mental illness arising from captivity, 1939 to 1947.","authors":"Gabriel Lawson","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261427332","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X261427332","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines medical and lay perceptions of captivity-induced psychopathologies observed among British prisoners of war during the Second World War. Drawing on medical reports, POW memoirs, and camp publications, it explores how both medical and lay observers understood captivity-induced neurotic illness as a collective, environmentally driven disorder rather than an individual pathology. By reintroducing 'barbed wire disease' into the historical narrative, this paper challenges trauma-centred interpretations of military psychiatry and highlights the social and environmental dimensions of mental illness in captivity, offering new perspectives on rehabilitation, resilience, and the boundaries between mental health and ill-health.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"243-259"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507490/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147370124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychiatryPub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-03-19DOI: 10.1177/0957154X261430923
Valter L Piedade, Guilherme Messas
{"title":"Back to Karl Jaspers' incomprehensibility of schizophrenia: A longitudinal approach.","authors":"Valter L Piedade, Guilherme Messas","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261430923","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X261430923","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Schizophrenia has remained from its conception one of psychopathology's most debated topics. Karl Jaspers' theorem of its \"incomprehensibility\" has been particularly influential, often reduced to the impossibility of empathic understanding within the clinical encounter. Contemporary critiques, however, frequently misinterpret Jaspers' phenomenological framework, overlooking the broader scope of its thought. This paper proposes a reinterpretation of Jaspers' incomprehensibility theorem by distinguishing three interconnected levels: (1) phenomenological, as closed to empathic understanding; (2) biographical, as a rupture in the continuity of meaning across personal development; and (3) existential, as the impossibility of grasping a person's Existence. By revisiting these dimensions, we argue for a hermeneutic revaluation of Jaspers' theorem, highlighting its relevance for contemporary discussions on the longitudinality of psychopathology.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"284-298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147482040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychiatryPub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-03-31DOI: 10.1177/0957154X261430318
Tim Snelson
{"title":"Reel worlds: Reconstructing the history of postwar child psychotherapy through fiction film.","authors":"Tim Snelson","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261430318","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X261430318","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article uses British drama film <i>No Place for Jennifer</i> (1950) to argue for the evidential value of staged content of real psychotherapeutic places (Institute of Child Psychology) and practices (Margaret Lowenfeld's World Technique). In the absence of 'real' documentary footage, discoveries of recreated therapeutic spaces within largely forgotten genre films can help reconstruct histories of the 'psy' sciences whilst offering insight into the contestations specific sites and practices provoked. Employing Baron's reformulation from 'documentary' to 'archival document', it demonstrates that content extracted from previously disregarded films can fill archival lacunas whilst expanding both 'what can be said' about the past and how it can be said.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"299-316"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13507488/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147595333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychiatryPub Date : 2026-09-01Epub Date: 2026-05-15DOI: 10.1177/0957154X261442900
Haszira Muhamad Yusof, Azlizan Mat Enh
{"title":"Encouraging home care: Family involvement in the care of female mental patients in the Straits Settlements (1900-1930).","authors":"Haszira Muhamad Yusof, Azlizan Mat Enh","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261442900","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X261442900","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines the changing role of family involvement in caring for female mental patients in the Straits Settlements from the late 19th century to 1930. Using Reports, Medical Department records, and correspondence, it shows how colonial policy gradually shifted responsibility from hospitals to households, especially for women with mild or stabilised illness. What began as a response to overcrowding evolved into efforts to educate families, promote visitation, and build ties. Home routines and activities reframed mental illness from supernatural to medical and domestic terms. Families faced economic strains but became central to recovery and reintegration through care and handicrafts. By 1930, it was extended to the Federated Malay States, reflecting negotiated caregiving shaped by gender norms and kinship.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"317-334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147949929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between healing and repression: The role of medicine and psychiatry in Hohenschönhausen prison as reconstructed from memories.","authors":"Felicitas Söhner, Kathleen Haack, Tilman Wickert, Ekkehardt Kumbier","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261427322","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X261427322","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigates the role of medical, and in particular psychiatric, care in the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen remand prison, situated within the repressive state security apparatus of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Drawing on 11 oral history interviews with former political prisoners, two physicians in different capacities, and a lawyer, it examines the tensions between the professional mandate of care and the political embedding of medical practice. The central question is how doctors navigated a system that structurally intertwined care and control. The findings reveal a complex and ambivalent picture. Physicians frequently emphasised adherence to professional standards and ethical duties, and some exercised limited autonomy to influence treatment decisions. Yet, detainees describe medical care as intermittently available, often instrumentalised for political purposes, and sometimes experienced as distant or dismissive. Psychiatric interventions were rarely applied solely for therapeutic ends, but rather to maintain detainees' functional capacity for interrogation and to produce usable expert witness reports. Medical records were systematically communicated to the secret police, effectively suspending confidentiality. Reports of sedation during interrogation further highlight unresolved ethical and practical tensions. Overall, the study demonstrates that medical expertise in this context was both constrained and deployed in ways that reinforced state control, yet individual physicians occasionally exercised agency within these restrictions. By juxtaposing professional self-perceptions with detainees' experiences, the research contributes to a nuanced historical reassessment of medicine under authoritarian conditions. It underscores the duality of care and coercion, the uneven distribution of agency, and the moral dilemmas faced by medical personnel.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"260-283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147463976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Governing madness before the asylum: Administrative practices in managing insanity in Wallachia, 1832-1839.","authors":"Timotei Oprea-Stoian","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261478242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X261478242","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article reconstructs the administrative management of insanity in Wallachia between 1832 and 1839, prior to the establishment of the first psychiatric institution. Drawing on unpublished archival sources, it traces the procedural route through which individuals identified as insane were reported, evaluated, confined in monasteries and, in some cases, reintegrated into their communities. The analysis reveals a coherent administrative mechanism involving police authorities, central institutions and monastic infrastructure, within which madness functioned less as a medical category than as the outcome of a socially mediated process. The article challenges the dominant historiographical view that locates the beginnings of psychiatric governance in the emergence of the asylum, arguing instead for its earlier administrative formation.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"957154X261478242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148867177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Demanding characteristics: Psychiatry, psychology and the social sciences in Martin T. Orne's therapy of Anne Sexton.","authors":"James Bradley, Susan Bradley Smith","doi":"10.1177/0957154X261467304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X261467304","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article uses Anne Sexton's therapy by Martin T. Orne as a frame for investigating and contextualising the unusual therapeutic rationale that lay behind her treatment. The rationale had three sources: the results of Orne's experimental psychological research, particularly the 'demand characteristics of social psychology experiments'; the functional sociology of Robert Merton and Talcott Parsons; and the influence of Jerome D. Frank's concept of 'effective hope'. Unpacking this story builds on the work of a number of historians who have destabilised one of the major binaries that has shaped historiographical interpretations of post-war psychiatry (i.e. biological psychiatry <i>vs</i> Freudianism), opens up a space for further investigations of interdisciplinarity in psychiatry, while providing a better understanding of why Orne treated Sexton the way he did.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":" ","pages":"957154X261467304"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148707685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}