Rietmann, Felix (Author)
Guenther, Katja (Advisor)
Wailoo, Keith (Advisor)
Princeton University
Guenther, Katja
Wailoo, Keith
Physical Details: 214 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation explores epistemic, social, and cultural dimensions of the use of audiovisual technologies in infant psychology and psychiatry in the USA and Western Europe from the mid-twentieth century to the present. It argues that the successive introduction of cinematography, video, computational assessment methods, and digital interfaces in research and clinical practice has contributed to a fundamental change in the scientific understanding and medical treatment of young children: The focus in pediatrics, developmental psychology, and infant psychiatry has shifted from the biological and psychological characteristics of the individual infant to the temporal dynamics of infant-caregiver interaction. Observational technologies have played a pivotal role in making these dynamics analyzable for researchers, visible for practitioners, and accessible for therapists. They have made possible the rise of infant mental health as a distinct field of medical expertise and are constitutive of its observational, diagnostic, and therapeutic practices. Chapter One examines how, in the USA in the post-World-War-II period, psychoanalytic practitioners used ethnographic and documentary film to draw public and professional attention to the emotional life of infants, making infancy a site for observational research and mental health intervention. Chapter Two looks at the revival of cinematographic microanalysis in infant research in the 1960s and 70s, exploring how it contributed to the localization of pathology in infancy on an interactional level. Chapter Three argues that the introduction of video technology into research and clinical practice in the 1970s and 80s enabled infant mental health to consolidate as a field. Chapter Four explores how, in the 1990s and 2000s, digital and computational technologies contributed to the international spread and domestication of the interactive vision of infancy. The study draws on a rich array of archival and primary source material, including research films and videos, personal manuscripts and correspondences, scientific and medical publications, parenting advice literature, architectural layouts, oral history interviews, and participant observations. Through its focus on the role of audiovisual technologies in infant psychology and psychiatry, it contributes to the history of science and medicine, while also speaking to scholarship in film and media studies and the history of childhood.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Peter Skagius;
(2019)
Brains and Psyches: Child Psychological and Psychiatric Expertise in a Swedish Newspaper, 1980–2008
(/isis/citation/CBB997405424/)
Book
John Cheney-Lippold;
(2017)
We are data : Algorithms and the making of our digital selves
(/isis/citation/CBB593815757/)
Article
Alfred Lameli;
(2018)
Alte Karten, neue Daten. Zur Transformation eines historischen Grundlagenwerks der Sprachwissenschaft
(/isis/citation/CBB380372109/)
Book
Henri Ellenberger;
Emmanuel Delille;
(2017)
Ethno-psychiatrie
(/isis/citation/CBB491409049/)
Book
Schechter, Kate;
(2014)
Illusions of a Future: Psychoanalysis and the Biopolitics of Desire
(/isis/citation/CBB001551577/)
Article
Phil Brown;
(2021)
From the Radical Psychology Movement to STS: A Journey From the 1960s in Multiple Parts
(/isis/citation/CBB099951762/)
Article
Christopher D. Kilgore;
(2016)
Bad Networks: From Virus to Cancer in Post-Cyberpunk Narrative
(/isis/citation/CBB669763926/)
Article
Lenny van Rosmalen;
René van der Veer;
Frank CP van der Horst;
(2020)
The nature of love: Harlow, Bowlby and Bettelheim on affectionless mothers
(/isis/citation/CBB283086142/)
Book
Jessica Martucci;
(2015)
Back to the Breast: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding in America
(/isis/citation/CBB467915211/)
Book
Nicole Seymour;
(2018)
Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age
(/isis/citation/CBB666319608/)
Thesis
Moritz Ingwersen;
(2018)
All Things Fusible: Media, Science, and Mythology in the Fiction of Neal Stephenson
(/isis/citation/CBB583734163/)
Article
Reijer Hendrikse;
Ilke Adriaans;
Tobias J. Klinge;
Rodrigo Fernandez;
(2022)
The Big Techification of Everything
(/isis/citation/CBB019537404/)
Multimedia Object
Eamonn Bell;
Nick Prior;
(2020)
Nick Prior, “Popular Music, Digital Technology and Society” (SAGE, 2018)
(/isis/citation/CBB227164127/)
Book
Corrina Laughlin;
(2021)
Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB828653011/)
Article
Duschinsky, Robbie;
(2015)
The Emergence of the Disorganized/Disoriented (D) Attachment Classification, 1979--1982
(/isis/citation/CBB001550688/)
Book
Rachel K. Gibson;
(2020)
When the Nerds Go Marching In: How Digital Technology Moved from the Margins to the Mainstream of Political Campaigns
(/isis/citation/CBB385530642/)
Article
Blomkvist, Pär;
(2004)
De nyföddas drivhus: Teknik och etik i den svenska neonatalvårdens historia 1945--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB000772815/)
Article
Carroll, Katherine;
(2014)
Body Dirt or Liquid Gold? How the “Safety” of Donated Breastmilk Is Constructed for Use in Neonatal Intensive Care
(/isis/citation/CBB001421180/)
Article
Reed, Matt T.;
(2004)
“La manie d'Écrire”: Psychology, Auto-observation, and Case History
(/isis/citation/CBB000671311/)
Book
Kit Hughes;
(2020)
Television at Work: Industrial Media and American Labor
(/isis/citation/CBB612692604/)
Be the first to comment!