Analyzing Psychiatric Patient Files in South-eastern Europe: Theoretical Approaches, Methodological Questions and Practical Outcomes

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The purpose of this panel is to confront some theoretical perspectives coming from contemporary analytic philosophy of psychiatry and the traditional approach that a historic investigation of psychiatry usually employs. The patient files coming from Habsburg Croatia and Habsburg Slavic lands will be the primary target of such an investigation. The sources of investigation will be the patient files, the theoretical discussion of that era as well as the contemporary theoretical approaches to those issues. The questions that will be put forward are the status of patient voices, the justification of the criterion for psychiatric seclusion in the Habsburg period and post Habsburg era, the treatment of maladjusted persons and the criterion of considering a person to be maladjusted and/or mentally ill, the problem of dangerousness and how it was dealt by the psychiatric theory of that time and how it was seen by the practitioners as well as the patients.

Sub Unit

• Sociology/Public Health/Education

Chair

• Heike Karge, U of Regensburg (Germany)

Papers

• Can Contemporary Accounts of Mental Illness Offer Recommendations for the Study of the History of Antisocial Disorders? - Luca Malatesti, U of Rijeka (Croatia)

• The Justification of Psychiatric Seclusion at the Turn of the Century in the Habsburg Northern Adriatic - Filip Cec, U of Rijeka (Croatia)

• Narrating Madness: Cultural Differences and Power Relationships in the Patient Files of the Stenjevac Insane Asylum (1879-1918) - Vinko Drača, Filozofski Fakultet, Sveučilište u Zagrebu

Discussants

• Ana Antic, Birbeck, U of London (UK)

• Heike Karge, U of Regensburg (Germany)