Tag Archives: religion

April 20th Talk! Religion & Anti-psychiatry in Imperial Germany

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The British Psychological Society’s History of Psychology Centre, in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines, has announced the next talk as part of its spring term BPS History of Psychological Disciplines Seminar Series. On April 20th Eric Engstrom (left) will be speaking on “Pastoral Psychiatry and Irrenseelsorge: Religious Aspects of the Anti-psychiatry Debates in Imperial Germany.” Full details follow below.

The British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines

Location: UCL Arts and Humanities Common Room (G24), Foster Court, Malet Place, London WC1E 7JG

Time: 6pm-7.30pm

Monday 20 April 2015
Dr Eric Engstrom (Humboldt University of Berlin), “Pastoral Psychiatry and Irrenseelsorge: Religious Aspects of the Anti-psychiatry Debates in Imperial Germany.” The abstract reads,

Historians of psychiatry have often enough interpreted the relationship between psychiatry and religion within narrative frameworks that focus on diagnoses and treatments (religious madness, exorcism) or that emphasise broader historical processes such as secularisation, medicalisation, and biologisation. While there is considerable merit to such frameworks, recent critiques of the secularisation paradigm have suggested a larger place for religion and spirituality in late 19th-century urban culture than is often assumed. The work of the American historian Edward R. Dickinson in particular has reminded us of the enduring influence and inertia of conservative Christian organisations in shaping moral discourse and social policy in the Kaiserreich.

My paper examines more closely the interdisciplinary topography between psychiatric and religious professionals, mapping out some of the common terrain on which they cooperated and/or disagreed with one another. In particular, I will examine debates about the place of religion in 19th-century asylum culture and the role of the so-called ‘Irrenseelsorger’. Against this backdrop and drawing especially on examples from Berlin, I will then explore efforts by religious organisations to expand their role in psychiatric after-/extramural care and show how those efforts contributed decisively to a nascent ‘anti-psychiatry’ movement in the years leading up to World War One.

New JHBS: Intelligence Testing in India, Racism in South Africa, & More

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The autumn 2014 issue of Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences is now online. Articles in this issue discuss the race and professional organizations in South Africa, intelligence testing in British India, and discussion over psychical, occult, and religious research at early twentieth century international congresses. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“The Rhetoric of Racism: Revisiting the Creation of the Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (1956–1962),” by Wahbie Long. The abstract reads,

This paper revisits the 1962 splitting of the South African Psychological Association (SAPA), when disaffected Afrikaner psychologists broke away to form the whites-only Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA). It presents an analysis of the rhetorical justification for forming a new professional association on principles at odds with prevailing international norms, demonstrating how the episode involved more than the question of admitting black psychologists to the association. In particular, the paper argues that the SAPA-PIRSA separation resulted from an Afrikaner nationalist reading of the goals of psychological science. PIRSA, that is, insisted on promoting a discipline committed to the ethnic-national vision of the apartheid state. For its part, SAPA’s racial integration was of a nominal order only, ostensibly to protect itself from international sanction. The paper concludes that, in a racist society, it is difficult to produce anything other than a racist psychology.

“Searching for South Asian Intelligence: Psychometry in British India, 1919–1940,” by Shivrang Setlur. The abstract reads, Continue reading New JHBS: Intelligence Testing in India, Racism in South Africa, & More →

July Talk! BPS History of Psychological Disciplines Seminar Series

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The British Psychological Society’s History of Psychology Centre, in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines, has announced another talk as part of the BPS History of Psychological Disciplines Seminar Series. On July 21st Vincent Barras, of the University of Lausanne, will be speaking on “Plays between Reason, Language and Gods: The Case of Glossolalia 19th-20th Centuries.” Full details follow below.

The British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines

Location: UCL Arts and Humanities Common Room (G24), Foster Court, Malet Place, London WC1E 7JG
Time: 6pm-7.30pm

Monday 21 July
Professor Vincent Barras (University of Lausanne)
“Plays between Reason, Language and Gods: The Case of Glossolalia 19th-20th Centuries”

Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, plays a surprisingly important role in discussions between theologians, psychologists and psychiatrists at the turn of the 20th century on the relationships between religious psychology, mental automatisms, subliminal
processes and inner language, and in the formation of modern psychology itself. Its role in the formation of modern psychology will be reconstructed, with particular emphasis on the debates around the Swiss theologian Emile Lombard’s masterpiece of 1910, “Concerning glossolalia in the early Christians and similar phenomena.”

New Issue: History of the Human Sciences

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The April 2013 issue of the journal History of the Human Sciences is now online. Included in these issue are seven all new articles on topics that include the history of psychiatric ideas about self-harm, madness and the brain, and early British and American sociology. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Religion, polygenism and the early science of human origins,” by Terence D. Keel. The abstract reads,

American polygenism was a provocative scientific movement whose controversial claim that humankind did not share a common ancestor caused a firestorm among naturalists and the lay public beginning in the 1830s. This article gives specific attention to the largely overlooked religious ideas marshaled by American polygenists in their effort to construct race as a unit of analysis. I focus specifically on the thought of the American polygenist and renowned surgeon Dr Josiah Clark Nott (1804–73) of Mobile, Alabama. Scholars have claimed that in his effort to establish a properly modern scientific view of race Nott was one of the first American naturalists to publicly denounce the notion of common human descent (monogenesis) as proclaimed in the Bible. I argue that despite his rejection of monogenesis, Nott’s racial theory remained squarely within the tradition of Christian ideas about the natural world. American polygenism provides an example of how scientific and religious ideas worked together in the minds of American antebellum thinkers in the development of novel theories about race and human origins.

“Badness, madness and the brain – the late 19th-century controversy on immoral persons and their malfunctioning brains,” by Felix Schirmann. The abstract reads, Continue reading New Issue: History of the Human Sciences →

History of International Psychology and Religion

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The August issue of History of Psychology has just been released online. The focus of this issue is the history of psychology and religion. Notably, much of the history of psychology and religion featured in this issue involves histories outside of the North American context. Among the non-American, national psychologies discussed in  this issue are those of Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The articles featured in this issue include:

“Historical intersections of psychology, religion, and politics in national contexts” by Robert Kugelmann and Jacob A. Belzen. The abstract reads:

Various types of psychology have come into existence in and have been interacting with a plurality of contexts, contexts that have been radically varying in different states or nations. One important factor in the development of psychology has been the multiple relationships to the Christian religion, whether understood as an institution, a worldview, or a form of personal spirituality. The articles in this issue focus on the intertwinements between institutional religion and national political structures and on their influence on developing forms of psychology in four different national contexts: Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Within these four settings, aspects of the ways in which varying forms of Christian religion coconstituted, facilitated, and shaped psychology, theoretically, practically, and institutionally, are examined. The formative power of the religions was not independent of the relationships between religion and political power, but rather mediated by these. Continue reading History of International Psychology and Religion →

W.R. Harper’s vision for the University of Chicago

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Harper with John D. Rockefeller in 1901In a recent issue of History of Education Quarterly, 48(4), Michael Lee discusses William Rainey Harper’s role in the founding of — the second — University of Chicago in 1891 and what the recognition of his explicitly religious approach means for the standard secular histories of higher education.

Harper’s conception of the relationship between scholarly research and Christianity challenges and complicates the dominant history of the development of universities in America. Whereas most mid- and late nineteenth-century university presidents in America gently reassured a nervous public that the Christian religion had nothing to fear from research and scholarly freedom, Harper trumpeted a different message: the research university would save Christianity. (pp. 510-511)

Harper’s approach distinguished him from the other visionary administrators of his time, while at the same time connecting him to an earlier tradition.

American colleges, like Harvard and Yale, were originally little more than boarding schools for young boys training for the ministry. Professors strove to instill godly character and knowledge of the Bible by recitation, rhetoric, and simple mathematics. They were seldom expected to research or discover new knowledge. In the mid- and late nineteenth century, educational leaders such as Henry Phillip Tappan of the University of Michigan, Noah Porter of Yale, Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins University, G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, and Seth Low of Columbia College hoped to elevate the level of scholarship in the United States, and the German universities served as their ideal. In this regard, Harper was like many of the first generation of university presidents. However, this article argues that Harper’s vision of a university made him unique among his peers. (p. 510)

The results of this difference shaped the specific character of the early University of Chicago—and the institutional context that greeted John Dewey upon his arrival from the University of Michigan in 1894. Continue reading W.R. Harper’s vision for the University of Chicago →

Female Forensic Committal in Ireland, 1910–1948

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In a recent issue of Social History of Medicine, 21(2), Brendan D. Kelly reports the findings of his examination of the case records for all women admitted to Dublin’s Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum between 1910 and 1948.

The majority of women were Roman Catholic (85.4 per cent) and had a mean age of 36.4 years. The majority were convicted of a crime (85.7 per cent), of whom 75.0 per cent were convicted of killing, most commonly child-killing. The majority of women detained ‘at the Lord Lieutenant’s Pleasure’ (indefinitely) were convicted of murder (51.7 per cent), assault (20.7 per cent) or infanticide (13.8 per cent); mean duration of detention was 5.6 years. The most common diagnoses were ‘mania’ or ‘delusional insanity’ (38.1 per cent) and ‘melancholia’ (23.8 per cent); 7.1 per cent were considered ‘sane’. Following their detention, 28.1 per cent of women were transferred to district asylums and the remainder were released under various different circumstances. In common with similar studies from other countries, these data demonstrate that the fate of these women was largely determined by a combination of societal, legal and medical circumstances, as evidenced by the socio-economic profile of women admitted and changes in admission patterns following the introduction of the Mental Treatment Act 1945. The role of other factors (such as religion) in determining their fate merits further study.

To help build on Kelly’s findings, a selection of readings on “religion and madness” are provided below the fold. Continue reading Female Forensic Committal in Ireland, 1910–1948 →