Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness - The Eberbach Asylum and German Society, 1815-1849

Zusatztext "Ann Goldberg's new book opens a challenging new dimension of nineteenth-century German social history. We've had histories of asylums and medicalization in other national fields for some years, likewise a profusion of works on the formation of Germany's bourgeois culture. There is even the kernel of a literature on early nineteenth-century German rural society. Now Goldberg has beautifully brought together these concerns. This fascinating exploration of sexualities, religion, and the modern pedagogies of order takes us to the frontier of bourgeois culture and rural society, where ordinary people learned how to be ill. This is a 'micro' history that compels the 'macro' to listen."--Geoff Eley, The University of Michigan Informationen zum Autor Ann Goldberg is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. Klappentext How 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 volumemines 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, abold 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. Asauthor 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, andmasturbatory 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 psychiatryas 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," Goldbergemploys diagnostic patterns to illuminate the ways in which madne Zusammenfassung How 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, th...

Product details

• Authors: Ann Goldberg, Ann (Assistant Professor of History Goldberg
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.12.2000
• EAN: 9780195140521
• ISBN: 978-0-19-514052-1
• No. of pages: 246
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General