The Controversy Surrounding Slave Insanity: The Diagnosis, Treatment and Lived Experience of Mentally Ill Slaves in the Antebellum South (2018)
Mooney, Katherine C. (Advisor)
Simon, Kristi M. (Author)
Mooney, Katherine C.
Florida State University
Physical Details: 138 pp.
Language: English
Focusing on the period from approximately 1800-1865, this thesis uses a historical conceptualist perspective to examine how psychiatric history intersects with the lived experience of slaves in the antebellum south. Unlike previous works that tell the history of psychiatry through the history of the asylum movement, this study seeks to emphasize how everyday Americans, from white physicians to slaves, conceptualized, discussed, diagnosed, and treated black insanity. In the process, this study illuminates the way the politics, beliefs, and culture of nineteenth-century society impacted the way Americans viewed black insanity. Moreover, the findings presented in this thesis attest to the pivotal role race, gender, and class played in both the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in the antebellum south. Hence, paying careful attention to the politics of the time, this study focuses on the highly contested and flexible process that was conceptualizing, diagnosing, quantifying, and treating black insanity in the antebellum south, and encourages readers to consider how the label “insane” impacted the life of an afflicted slave and their community.
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