Lecture 9: Social Control or Medical Intervention Flashcards
When was the lunacy reform?
1800-1850
What was the lunacy reform based on the principles of? What was this principle, in a broad unspecific sense?
based on the principles of the enlightenment that people who did not fit could be fixed, cured, or treated through scientific means
What were the four principles of the lunacy reform?
- Non-restraint
- Moral treatment
- Madness as disease
- Institutional treatment
What was principle 1, non-restraint?
Remove physically restraints that were used to literally chain lunatics or deviants believing that they exhibited behaviours that were dangerous.
What did the second principle, moral treatment, involve?
-Psychological treatments through work and appropriate activities that reflected norms of gender, class, etc.
What did women’s work in an asylum involve?
Needle work, playing the piano, being dressed appropriately, etc.
What did men’t work in an asylum involve?
reading, playing cards or chess, being dressed appropriately, etc. (parlour games).
What was the common theme that is represented in all paintings of appropriate activity in asylums (what type of behaviour is displayed)?
elitist behaviour–goal of the institution
What type of therapy arose out of the idea of work?
occupational therapy
What was the third principle of lunacy reform, madness as a disease?
Involved medicalization and the belief in curability
What was there a change in with madness as a disease that goes hand inland with attitude towards madness?
change in language
What did the idea that madness was a disease change most importantly?
a change in how people were treated (because a disease is not your fault)
Prior to the rise of the asylum, how did people receive care?
in private clinics that may or may not have been managed by people with medical training.
What does the fourth principle, institutional treatment, involve?
- care in specialized facilities
- the idea that madness is a disease means that it should be treated medically , in a hospital-like environment
In what year did we begin to see the rise (not introduction) of asylums?
by the late 1800s
When was the Quaker York Retreat built?
1813
What is the period of confinement of the insane often characterized by?
the Quaker York Retreat
What is the Quaker York Retreat?
A privately run religious institution that was one of the first places to incorporate moral therapy
Where was the Quaker York Retreat built? Why was this?
Built in rural area, far from the urban environment some believed produced more madness
What happened at the Quaker York Retreat (what was treatment like)?
Patients were re-exposed or reintroduced to the appropriate cultural behaviours that would allegedly allow them to function better.
What was confinement?
-removal of individuals from society and place in asylums.
What was confinement a part of?
therapy–rest, pastoral environment, fresh air.
What was confinement an opportunity for with regards to medical professional?
observe symptoms and patients, provide better care
-medical experimentation
What was the estimated number of people in asylums in 1950?
1.5 million
How many patients per asylums in the 1950?
100-1000 patients/asylum
What did asylums arguably become by the 1950s?
a dumping ground for society’s unwanted
-critics started suggesting that these are not hospitals
What did asylums in the 1950s give rise to?
fist classification system
Despite enthusiasm surrounding the rise of the asylum and the corresponding growth of a medical profession that specialized in mental disease, were there many cures that emerged?
no
What was a major problem in most asylums? Why?
- Overcrowding
- many people argued that this is because asylums served as the public receptacles for society’s unwanted
Who is David Rothman? What did he challenge? (4 points)
- American historian
- challenged the interpretation that these institutions were enlightened responses, based one form, treatment, and improvement
- sees principles of asylums as part of social fears about industrialization and urbanization, therefore create utopian order in the asylum which is removed from these contexts: cities are full of vice
- argued that urban middle class used penitentiaries and asylums to incarcerate deviant members of industrial society (secure their dominant position)
- that these institutions part of the way that e state plans to control their citizens so they would stay in line
What did Rothman believe the rise of the institution is?
A progressive facade that transfers authority to an urban middle class
What did Rothman believe was the driving force behind institutionalization?
No humanitarianism but instead middle-class power
What was the feminist class in regards to morality?
By the turn of the century, experts exclaimed that they alone could not distinguish between he working girl as victim and the working girl as a ‘moral menace’. Women transgressing the traditional gender boundaries and working in the public sphere invited criticism from social critics.
What was the goal with peace in regards to what federal policy was and has been?
- policy of assimilation
- transform someone into a more acceptable member of society
- transform from something we don’t understand or appreciate
What does Andrew Scull (historical sociologist) argue?
-that asylums are a product of a capitalist economy, where ‘unproductive’ members of society become a burden
In what way does Scull go further than Rothman in his argument?
by arguing that they were a product of a capitalist economy
What did Scull believe that asylums were? Why?
-a dumping ground for society’s unwanted/unproductive because they were not contributing to society.
What does Scull see social control of deviance as?
part of a larger process of increasing state control and giving rise to the ‘expert’ as part of a changing intellectual society
What was Scull’s view on the capitalist work ethic in regards to families?
Families were al-too-ready to send their ‘unproductive’ and ‘unwanted’ relatives to the asylum, those social control was not just class-based, but a function of a new capitalist ethic in society. Families struggling to get by in a capitalist framework get rid of their burdens.
