Thesis ID: CBB001561357

Psychiatrists and Crisis in Russia, 1880--1917 (2007)

unapi

Friedlander, Jacqueline Lee (Author)


University of California, Berkeley
Paperno, Irina
Slezkine, Yuri


Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisors: Paperno, Irina; Slezkine, Yuri
Physical Details: 451 pp.
Language: English

World War I has often been described as the starting point for the recognition and development of ideas about psychological trauma, which were crucial for the development of psychiatry and patient care in the Western world. Inasmuch as Russian psychiatrists and neurologists went into the First World War with the experiences of large numbers of battlefield breakdowns, during the Russo- Japanese war (1904-1905) and the 1905 revolution, which produced a large number of mental breakdowns, presents special interest to historians of psychiatry. This dissertation examines the responses of Russian psychiatrists and neurologist to three crises of the early twentieth century: the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905), the 1905 revolution, and World War I. Based on the medical literature of the time, the dissertation brings together an investigation of how the combined discipline of psychiatry-neurology developed as a medical specialty in the late nineteenth and an analysis of the ideas about psychological trauma that specialists developed during each of late Imperial Russia's crises. I argue that the evolution of psychiatry-neurology as a distinct branch of medicine and the development of ideas about psychological trauma were inextricably interwoven. Psychiatric institutions, especially the university psychiatric clinic, provided the context in which specialists developed the practical interventions for and conceptual interpretations of mental and nervous illnesses that an increasing number of them came to believe were the result of overwhelming events. Thus, like their colleagues across Europe, Russian specialists in mental medicine were fascinated by hypnotism and suggestive therapeutics in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Their theoretical and practical work on hypnotism provided the intellectual background, in particular the development of a holistic, psycho-physiological model of mind-body response to the outside environment, that helped psychiatrists analyze responses to overwhelming events at the beginning of the twentieth century. Specialists explained their patients' pathological responses to overwhelming events in several different ways. Some specialists tightly linked psychogenic illness to predisposition, but these were in the minority. Exploring the possibility that people without predisposition could fall ill with mental or functional nervous illnesses, most psychiatrists and neurologists concluded that this was indeed possible, especially when both physical and psychological stressors came together to disrupt the psycho- physiological equilibrium of normal subjects. This dissertation provides a detailed description of diagnostic procedures, conceptual moves, professional debates, and practical strategies of patient care used by Russian psychiatrists and neurologists during the early stages of the development of this specialty in their attempts to cope with the extraordinary social circumstances that befell them.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/08 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3275417.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561357/

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Authors & Contributors
Crouthamel, Jason
Dickson, Sheila
Jen Roberts
Panova, Evgenia L.
Jevremović, Petar
Ropper, Allan H.
Concepts
Psychiatry
Mental disorders and diseases
World War I
Psychology and war
Neurology
Psychic trauma
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
Places
Germany
Europe
Russia
Great Britain
Sydney (Australia)
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
Institutions
Moscow. Universitet
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