Article ID: CBB806434585

‘As syllable from sound’: the sonic dimensions of confinement at the State Hospital for the Insane at Worcester, Massachusetts (2020)

unapi

As the first state hospital in the USA, the Worcester State Hospital for the Insane at Worcester, Massachusetts (est. 1833), set a precedent for asylum design and administration that would be replicated across the country. Because the senses were believed to provide a direct conduit into a person’s mental state, the intended therapeutic force of the Worcester State Hospital resided in its particular command over sensory experience. In this paper, I examine how aurality was used as an instrument in the moral architecture of the asylum; how the sonic design of the asylum collided with the day-to-day logistics of institutional management; and the way that patients experienced and engaged with the resultant patterns of sound and silence.

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Authors & Contributors
De Cesaris, Fabrizio
Wilson, Matthew
John Holmes
William J. Glover
Valacchi, Maria Luisa
Dennis J. De Witt
Concepts
Architecture
Building construction
Design
Psychiatric hospitals
Health care
Hospitals and clinics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
20th century, late
17th century
Places
United States
England
Italy
Massachusetts (U.S.)
Rhode Island (U.S.)
Turin (Italy)
Institutions
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
McLean Hospital (Belmont, Mass.)
National Health Service (Great Britain)
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