IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB000900116

“Their Lack of Masculine Security and Aggression Was Obvious”: Gender and the Medicalization of Inebriety in the United States, 1930--50 (2007)

Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Volume: 24
Pages: 67--92

Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Conference Proceedings of the International Conference on Alcohol and Drug History
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Public health Psychology Alcoholism Medicine and gender Mental disorders and diseases Sexuality 20th century, early Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)

This article examines the roles of gender and sexuality in the public and private debate over medicalizing inebriety in the United States from 1930-50. During this period various interest groups wrestled with two competing visions of how to frame chronic drinking, which came to be labelled alcoholism following the repeal of Prohibition. Mainstream doctors and psychiatrists agreed that the underlying cause of alcoholism was in the mind of the individual. A number of psychiatrists went further, suggesting a connection between alcoholism and latent homosexuality. In contrast, laypeople identifying themselves as alcoholics advanced a second, competing vision of alcoholism that framed it as a blameless physiological illness. This second understanding of alcoholism, particularly as promoted by members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), emphasized the need for restoring heteronormative gender roles for alcoholics (who were generally men) and their spouses (who were generally women) as an important step to recovery. Indeed, this may help to explain the success of AA and its medicalization model in the US from 1930-50, as both built upon widely held cultural assumptions concerning gender roles and sexuality.

...More

Included in

Article Warsh, Cheryl Krasnick (2007) Editor's Introduction. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine (p. 5). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000900116/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Preston, Margaret H.; hÓgartaigh, Margaret Ó; (2012)
Gender and Medicine in Ireland, 1700--1950 (/isis/citation/CBB001551161/)

Article Santos, Fernando Sergio Dumas dos; Verani, Ana Carolina; (2010)
Alcoolismo e medicina psiquiátrica no Brasil do início do século XX (/isis/citation/CBB001420497/)

Book Paulo Drinot; (2020)
The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s (/isis/citation/CBB330483529/)

Book Healey, Dan; (2009)
Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917--1939 (/isis/citation/CBB001034256/)

Article Segrest, Mab; (2014)
Exalted on the Ward: “Mary Roberts,” the Georgia State Sanitarium, and the Psychiatric “Speciality” of Race (/isis/citation/CBB001201824/)

Article Thifault, Marie-Claude; (2010)
Les stéréotypes sexuels de l'enfermement asilaire au Québec, au tournant du 20e siècle (/isis/citation/CBB001024900/)

Article Wang, Wenji; (2011)
Psychological “Lower Job”: “Zephyr” and 1930--1940s Public Mental Health Discussed (/isis/citation/CBB001213718/)

Book Parle, Julie; (2007)
States of Mind: Searching For Mental Health in Natal and Zululand, 1868--1918 (/isis/citation/CBB001230333/)

Article Harris, Ben; (2011)
Arnold Gesell's Progressive Vision: Child Hygiene, Socialism and Eugenics (/isis/citation/CBB001220670/)

Book Eugene Raikhel; (2016)
Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic (/isis/citation/CBB191149414/)

Thesis Michael Pfeiffer; (2016)
Whose Gender? Whose Identity? Trans Medicine, Psychiatry, and the Symbolic Order (/isis/citation/CBB729191686/)

Article Dovio, Mariana; (2013)
El caso de la “mala vida”, peligrosidad y prevención de conductas marginales en Revista de Criminología, Psiquiatría, Medicina Legal y Ciencias Afines, en Buenos Aires, 1914--1923 (/isis/citation/CBB001420698/)

Thesis Nelson, Nicole Christine; (2011)
Capturing Complexity: Experimental Systems and Epistemic Scaffolds in Animal Behavior Genetics (/isis/citation/CBB001567338/)

Book Jenny Ellison; (2020)
Being Fat: Women, Weight, and Feminist Activism in Canada (/isis/citation/CBB801767411/)

Article Anders Sevelsted; (2019)
Degeneration, Protestantism, and Social Democracy: The Case of Alcoholism and “Illiberal” Policies and Practices in Denmark 1900–43 (/isis/citation/CBB831518679/)

Book Sheriff, Mary D.; (2004)
Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France (/isis/citation/CBB000630122/)

Article Lois P Rudnick; Alison M Heru; (2017)
The ‘secret’ source of ‘female hysteria’: the role that syphilis played in the construction of female sexuality and psychoanalysis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (/isis/citation/CBB726473206/)

Article Bourmaud, Philippe; (2013)
Les faux-semblants d'une politique internationale: la Société des Nations et la lutte contre l'alcoolisme dans les mandats (1919--1930) (/isis/citation/CBB001213545/)

Article Bonner, Kieran; (2013)
Eros and Ironic Intoxication: Profound Longing, Madness and Discipleship in Plato's Symposium and in Modern Life (/isis/citation/CBB001213732/)

Thesis Strovas, Karen Beth; (2011)
Sleep and Sleeplessness in the Victorian Novel, Jane Eyre to Dracula (/isis/citation/CBB001567273/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}