Madness and Modern Civilization

Fall 2009 Prof. Andreas Killen

History B4403 Office: NAC 5/128A
Tues 6:50-8:30 Tel: (212) 650-7454
NAC 5123 akillen@ccny.cuny.edu
Office Hours: T 5:30-6:30

This course examines social, cultural, and institutional aspects of the history of madness
in modern Europe and America. Beginning with the age of the so-called “Great
Confinement,” the course considers the institutional and therapeutic reforms of the
revolutionary and post-revolutionary era; the rise of theories of degeneration, hysteria and
neurasthenia in the second half of the 19th century; psychoanalysis; war neurosis and
military psychiatry; psychiatry under the Nazis; psychiatry and the legacy of imperialism;
the anti-psychiatry movement; and contemporary bio-psychiatry.
Required Texts

All texts can be purchased at the College Bookstore.

Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry

Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady
Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Sigmund Freud, Dora: Analysis of a Case of Hysteria
Pat Barker, Regeneration

In addition, there is a course pack. Other readings will be made available as necessary,
either through handouts or selected web-sites.

Assignments and Grades

Students will be required to write three papers and write a take-home final.

Attendance and participation are mandatory. Frequent absences will result in a lower grade,
and any student who misses three meetings without permission will fail the course.
Deadlines will be strictly enforced. Late papers will be penalized one grade for every day
the paper is late, and no extensions or incompletes will be granted without a doctor’s note.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated; for definitions and examples, see the CUNY Policy on
Academic Integrity: (http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/ctl/Plagiarism.htm#PlagiarismPolicies.)

Final grades will be based on the following: class participation (20%); three papers
(60%); final exam (20%).

Students interested in extra credit should speak with me about giving an oral presentation.

Course learning objectives

Students will develop a strong grasp of the major issues, themes, and debates relating to
the history of mental illness in the modern era.

Students will demonstrate proficiency in the analysis, evaluation and synthesis of primary
and secondary sources through short writing assignments as well as a major research
paper.

Students will demonstrate proficiency in historical reasoning and oral presentation and
argument.
Schedule

Week 1 (Sept 1) Introduction to the course

Week 2 (Sept 8) Madness in the Pre-Modern Era

Reading: Shorter, ch. 1
Pederson, A Mad People’s History of Madness, first person narratives
of madness in the pre-modern era (CP)
Eghigian, Killen, Leuenberger, “The Self as Project: Politics and
the Human Sciences in the 20th Century,” Osiris 21, 2007 (CP)

Assignment: watch and write a reaction paper on

the film “The Madness of King George” (due 9/22)

Week 3 (Sept 15) Making Madness Modern

Reading: Foucault, Madness and Civilization, ch. 8-9 (CP)
Discussion of “The Madness of King George”

Week 4 (Sept 22) The Age of Asylum Reform

Reading: Shorter, ch. 2
Taylor, ed. Embodied Selves, selections on “Moral Management” (CP)
Pederson, A Mad People’s History of Madness, Bedlam narrative (CP)

First paper due

Week 5 (Sept 29) No class - Monday schedule

Week 6 (Oct 6) Gender, Madness, and the Asylum

Reading: Showalter, Introduction, chs. 1-3
Pederson, A Mad People’s History of Madness, first person
narrative of life in NY State asylum (CP)

Assignment: 2nd paper, topic to be announced (due Oct. 20)

Week 7 (Oct 13) The Age of Degeneration

Reading: Shorter, ch.3
Showalter, chs. 4-5
Taylor, ed. Embodied Selves, selections on “Inherited Legacies” (CP)

Week 7 (Oct 20) The Discovery of Hysteria

Reading: Shorter, ch. 4
Showalter, ch. 6
Charcot, “Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System” (CP)
Breuer, “Anna O” (CP)

Second paper due

Week 8 (Oct 27) The Invention of the Talking Cure
Reading: Freud, Five Lectures, Dora

Week 9 (Nov 3) The Great War and Shellshock

Reading: Stone, “Shellshock and the Psychologists” (CP)
Barker, Regeneration
Optional: Showalter, ch. 7

Outline and bibliography for research paper due

Week 10 (Nov 10) The Mental Hygiene Movement

Reading: Beers, A Mind that Found Itself, excerpts (CP)
Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion, excerpts (CP)

Week 11 (Nov 17) Eugenics and Nazi Psychiatry

Reading: Garland, “The Ideology of Elimination: American and
German Eugenics, 1900-1945” (CP)
Burleigh, “Psychiatry, German Society, and Nazi ‘Euthanasia’” (CP)
Buck vs. Bell, 1927
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org
Documents on the Nazi euthanasia program (1939-1945)
http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocEuth.htm

Week 12 (Nov 24) Madness and Decolonization

Reading: Keller, “Madness and Colonization” (CP)
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, selections (CP)

Week 13 (Dec 1) The Anti-Psychiatry Movement

Reading: Szasz, “The Myth of Mental Illness”
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm
Rosenhan, “On Being Insane In Insane Places”
http://psychrights.org/Articles/Rosenham.htm
Foucault, Psychiatric Power, excerpt (CP)

Week 14 (Dec 8) The Psychopharmacological Revolution

Reading: Shorter, ch. 7-8
Kramer, Listening to Prozac, selections (CP)

Research paper due

Final take-home exam due Dec. 15