Henckes, Nicolas (Author)
Rzesnitzek, Lara (Author)
In the 20th century, the boundaries of psychosis emerged as an area in which psychiatric judgement faced numerous and profound uncertainties. Between obvious neuroses and personality and reactive disorders on the one hand, and unquestionable psychoses on the other, psychiatrists faced a world of suspected cases of schizophrenia, doubtful personality disorder diagnoses or probable cases of psychosis constituting a garden of equivocal clinical presentations in which both individual psychiatrists and the discipline as a whole were confronted with the limits of their knowledge. This article examines how psychiatrists from two German university clinics managed the multiple uncertainties involved in diagnosing cases of early psychosis between 1950 and 1980. Based on the analysis of a sample of records, we propose a pragmatic interpretation of the ways in which these uncertainties were recorded by psychiatrists. How were uncertainties and doubts expressed in the records and managed by clinicians? What means were used to dispel doubt? What were the consequences for patients of these diagnostic uncertainties? The article defines an uncertainty diagnosis as a diagnosis expressed with reservations by its author and recorded as such in a medical file. Depending on the nature of the uncertainty, the types of evidence used by the professionals and how this evidence was dealt with, we have identified three types of uncertainty diagnoses: suspicion, plausibility and probability diagnoses. The article then reflects on the role of the patients themselves in shaping these uncertain situations.
...More
Article
Majerus, Benoît;
(2008)
Psychiatrie im Wandel. Das Fallbeispiel Karl-Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik (1960--1980)
(/isis/citation/CBB001220570/)
Article
Liesbet De Kock;
(2020)
‘I think’ (the thoughts of others). The German tradition of apperceptionism and the intellectual history of schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB651883356/)
Article
de Bont, Raf;
(2010)
Schizophrenia, Evolution and the Borders of Biology: On Huxley et al.'s 1964 Paper in Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB001232246/)
Article
Collins, Kenneth;
(2008)
Joseph Schorstein: R. D. Laing's “Rabbi”
(/isis/citation/CBB000950365/)
Article
Carlo Maggini;
Riccardo Dalle Luche;
(2022)
An overview on Hebephrenia, a diagnostic cornerstone in the neurodevelopmental model of Schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB865868388/)
Article
Balz, Viola;
(2011)
Terra Incognita: An Historiographic Approach to the First Chlorpromazine Trials Using Patient Records of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Heidelberg
(/isis/citation/CBB001232217/)
Article
Balz, Viola;
(2008)
Die Geburt der Stammkarte. Zur Genese eines Epistems der neuroleptischen Wirksamkeit in der frühen Psychopharmakaforschung in der BRD
(/isis/citation/CBB001220560/)
Book
Orna Ophir;
(2022)
Schizophrenia: An Unfinished History
(/isis/citation/CBB447550162/)
Article
Yoshiaki Motobayashi;
Josef Parnas;
Bin Kimura;
Dylan Luers Toda;
(2016)
‘The “schizophrenic” in the self-consciousness of schizophrenic patients’, by Mari Nagai (1990)
(/isis/citation/CBB199320587/)
Article
Hedgecoe, Adam;
(2001)
Schizophrenia and the Narrative of Enlightened Geneticization
(/isis/citation/CBB000100626/)
Article
Woods, Angela;
(2013)
Rethinking “Patient Testimony” in the Medical Humanities: The Case of Schizophrenia Bulletin`s First Person Accounts
(/isis/citation/CBB001320814/)
Article
Evans, Bonnie;
(2014)
The Foundations of Autism: The Law Concerning Psychotic, Schizophrenic, and Autistic Children in 1950s and 1960s Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB001420182/)
Article
Fraguas, David;
Breathnach, C. S.;
(2009)
Problems with Retrospective Studies of the Presence of Schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB000950385/)
Article
Mills, John A.;
(2010)
Hallucinogens as Hard Science: The Adrenochrome Hypothesis for the Biogenesis of Schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB001033694/)
Book
Kieran McNally;
(2016)
A Critical History of Schizophrenia
(/isis/citation/CBB412095902/)
Article
Dalzell, Thomas;
(2010)
The Reception of Eugen Bleuler in British Psychiatry, 1892--1954
(/isis/citation/CBB001232244/)
Article
Passione, Roberta;
(2018)
Psichiatria e condizione umana: Il contributo di Silvano Arieti
(/isis/citation/CBB859391750/)
Book
Michael Escamilla;
(2016)
Bleuler, Jung, and the Creation of the Schizophrenias
(/isis/citation/CBB832704528/)
Article
Kraam, Abdullah;
Phillips, Paula;
(2012)
Hebephrenia: A Conceptual History
(/isis/citation/CBB001251919/)
Article
Cutting, J.;
(2015)
First Rank Symptoms of Schizophrenia: Their Nature and Origin
(/isis/citation/CBB001551561/)
Be the first to comment!