Tag Archives: lycanthropy

New Issue History of Psychiatry: Albert Moll and Hypnosis, Therapeutic Fascism, Lycanthropy, & More

A new issue of History of Psychiatry is now online. Included in this issue are articles on Albert Moll (right) and hypnosis, therapeutic fascism, lycanthropy, and much more. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“The powers of suggestion: Albert Moll and the debate on hypnosis,” by Andreas-Holger Maehle. The abstract reads,

The Berlin physician Albert Moll (1862–1939) was an advocate of hypnotic suggestion therapy and a prolific contributor to the medical, legal and public discussions on hypnotism from the 1880s to the 1920s. While his work in other areas, such as sexology, medical ethics and parapsychology, has recently attracted scholarly attention, this paper for the first time comprehensively examines Moll’s numerous publications on hypnotism and places them in their contemporary context. It covers controversies over the therapeutic application of hypnosis, the reception of Moll’s monograph Der Hypnotismus (1889), his research on the rapport between hypnotizer and subject, his role as an expert on ‘hypnotic crime’, and his views on the historical influence of hypnotism on the development of psychotherapy. My findings suggest that Moll rose to prominence due to the strong late-nineteenth-century public and medical interest in the phenomena of hypnosis, but that his work was soon overshadowed by new, non-hypnotic psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly Freud’s psychoanalysis.

“Mental health, citizenship, and the memory of World War II in the Netherlands (1945–85),” by Harry Oosterhuis. The abstract reads, Continue reading New Issue History of Psychiatry: Albert Moll and Hypnosis, Therapeutic Fascism, Lycanthropy, & More

Homosexuality, Asylums, and Lycanthrophy

The December 2009 issue of History of Psychiatry has just been released online. Among the five all-new articles that appear in the journal are ones on the history of homosexuality in Scotland, the visual experience of landscape as a therapeutic practice in British asylums, and Byzantine understandings of lycanthropy. Also included in this issue is a translated section of L. Snell’s 1852 “On alterations in the form of speech and on the formation of new words and expressions in madness”, as well as a request from researchers of the Venice asylum for assistance in a project that seeks to situate the history of this institution in the larger European context. The titles, authors, and abstracts from the articles in the issue follow below.

In “Psychiatry and homosexuality in mid-twentieth-century Edinburgh: the view from Jordanburn Nerve Hospital” Robert Davidson (pictured, left), Emeritus Professor of Social History and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, examines the 1950s understanding of homosexuality in Edinburgh and contrasts these views with those of the medical community in Glasgow. Continue reading Homosexuality, Asylums, and Lycanthrophy