This thesis brings together the archival specificity of an institutional asylum study and more theoretical concerns raised in recent work on the cultural history and the subjective experiences of madness. In order to link these two often contrasted approaches I examine the Retreat as a site of writing. I analyse the textual forms of institutional and medical self-presentation and use the rich holdings of the Retreat to explore the perceptions and self- perceptions of Retreat residents. I analyse different types of source material and move from the institutional towards the personal. I begin by looking at public documents produced by the institution and end by investigating the private letters and diaries of patients. I look at annual reports as a literary form and consider how they construct an image of the Retreat. I examine case notes and doctors letters to explore doctors' writing in relation to professional identity and medical practice. By looking at admissions forms and letters from families to the Retreat I investigate family relationships with patients and the Retreat doctors. The main part of my thesis focuses upon patient writings. In 1982, Dale Peterson called for historians to 'hear from those who, by experience, are more closely connected to the issues---mad people, mental patients themselves'. 1 Since then there have been several anthologised collections of 'mad peoples writings', investigations of patients' letters from asylums and oral history studies. I similarly want to uncover the voice of those considered insane but I adopt an approach that moves away from a homogenous and pathologising view of what has been called 'mad people's writings'. I am not interested in diagnosing insanity, but rather exploring what patients had to say about mental illness, the experience of incarceration, their family life and understandings of society. I also interpret their writings in terms of the different genres, styles and literary tropes that they used.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/02 (2006): 558. UMI pub. no. C824379.
Thesis
Alex Crawley;
(2018)
Method in His Madness Enacting Male Normativity in Holloway Sanatorium for the Insane, 1880-1910
(/isis/citation/CBB459377349/)
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Birgit Braun;
Johannes Kornhuber;
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Gustav Nikolaus Specht (1860–1940): psychiatric practice, research and teaching during a change of psychiatric paradigm before and after Kraepelin
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Coleborne, Catharine;
(2009)
Families, Insanity, and the Psychiatric Institution in Australia and New Zealand, 1860--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001232097/)
Article
Hutchison, Iain;
(2011)
Institutionalization of Mentally-Impaired Children in Scotland, c.1855--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001232201/)
Thesis
Marinski, Deborah R.;
(2006)
Unfortunate Minds: Mental Insanity in Ohio, 1883--1909
(/isis/citation/CBB001561679/)
Book
Melling, Joseph;
Forsythe, Bill;
(2006)
The Politics of Madness: The State, Insanity and Society in England, 1845--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000774000/)
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Jabert, Alexander;
(2005)
Formas de administração da loucura na Primeira República: o caso do estado do Espírito Santo
(/isis/citation/CBB000640220/)
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Wallis, Jennifer;
(2013)
The Bones of the Insane
(/isis/citation/CBB001320330/)
Thesis
Amanda Lynn Brewer;
(2022)
Care and Therapy: Food and the Institutionalized Mentally Ill in the Long Progressive Era
(/isis/citation/CBB541821695/)
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Kragh, Jesper Vaczy;
(2010)
Malaria Fever Therapy for General Paralysis of the Insane in Denmark
(/isis/citation/CBB001232235/)
Book
Melling, Joseph;
Forsythe, Bill;
(1999)
Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914: A Social History of Madness in Comparative Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB000111209/)
Book
Reaume, Geoffrey;
(2000)
Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1770-1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000101654/)
Book
Steven Taylor;
(2016)
Child Insanity in England, 1845-1907
(/isis/citation/CBB540030183/)
Article
Wulf, Stefan;
Schmiedebach, Heinz-Peter;
(2010)
Ver/rückte Anamnesen à la Friedrichsberg. Die Explorationen ausländischer Patienten durch mehrsprachige Mitpatienten in einer deutschen Irrenanstalt um 1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001220591/)
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Michael, Pamela;
Hirst, David;
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Recording the Many Faces of Death at the Denbigh Asylum, 1848--1938
(/isis/citation/CBB001232192/)
Article
Motlatsi Thabane;
(2021)
Public mental health care in colonial Lesotho: themes emerging from archival material, 1918–35
(/isis/citation/CBB263655708/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Rahman, Shahina;
(2008)
Framing Mental Illness, 1923--1939: The Maudsley Hospital and Its Patients
(/isis/citation/CBB000774303/)
Article
Fangerau, Heiner;
(2005)
Politik und Nervosität: Gründung und Betrieb der ersten deutschen Volksnervenheilstätte “Rasemühle” bei Göttingen zwischen 1903 und 1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001031918/)
Article
Philippa Martyr;
Sophie Davison;
(2018)
Aboriginal People in Western Australian Mental Hospitals, 1903–1966
(/isis/citation/CBB420757965/)
Article
Pietikainen, Petteri;
(2009)
Strengthening the Will: Public Clinics for the Nervously Ill in Sweden in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB000932790/)
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