La psiquiatría del primer franquismo: una historia del olvido de la salud mental / A psiquiatria do primeiro regime franquista: uma história do esquecimento da saúde mental / The psychiatry of the first Franco regime: a history of the forgetfulness of mental health

En esta investigación presentamos una aproximación al cambio de mentalidad respecto a la enfermedad mental propugnada desde las obras de psiquiatras del primer franquismo como Antonio Vallejo-Nágera o Juan José López Ibor. Sus ideas, publicaciones e investigaciones ofrecieron al régimen la posibilidad de modificar las listas de internos e internas de las instituciones psiquiátricas del momento, cuyas camas comenzaron a ser ocupadas por personas procedentes de las cárceles, los hospitales militares o las calles, con el fin de someterlas a tratamientos y medicaciones para modificar unos comportamientos y actitudes señaladas por el saber psiquiátrico franquista como apartadas de lo “correcto” y “normal”.(AU)

Nesta investigação, apresentamos uma abordagem à mudançade mentalidade relativamente à doença mental defendidanas obras dos primeiros psiquiatras franquistas, comoAntonio Vallejo-Nágera e Juan José López Ibor. As suasideias, publicações e investigações ofereceram ao regime apossibilidade de modificar ases listas de internamento dasinstituições psiquiátricas da época, cujas camas passarama ser ocupadas por pessoas provenientes das prisões, doshospitais militares ou das ruas, com o objetivo de as submetera tratamento e medicação para modificar comportamentose atitudes que o saber psiquiátrico franquista consideravalonge de serem “correctos” e “normais”.(AU)

In this research we present an approach to the change ofmentality regarding mental illness advocated in the worksof early Francoist psychiatrists such as Antonio Vallejo-Nágera or Juan José López Ibor. Their ideas, publicationsand research offered the regime the possibility of modifyingthe lists of inmates of the psychiatric institutions of the time,whose beds began to be occupied by people from prisons,military hospitals or the streets, with the aim of subjectingthem to treatments and medications to modify behaviorsand attitudes identified by Franco's psychiatric knowledgeas being far from “correct” and “normal”.(AU)

Slavery and Its Afterlives in US Psychiatry.

Antecedents of racist treatments of Black patients by the psychiatric profession in the United States affect the way they view treatment today. Specifically, in this essay, we explore the enduring consequences of racial science on various treatment practices. We examined a range of primary sources on the history of racial theories about the mind, medical and psychiatric publications, and hospitals. We contextualize this analysis by examining the secondary literature in the history and sociology of psychiatry. Through analyzing racial thinking from the antebellum through the Jim Crow periods, we show how US medicine and psychiatry have roots in antebellum racial science and how carceral logics underpinned the past and present politics of Black mental health. Changing this trajectory requires practitioners to interrogate the historical foundations of racist psychiatric concepts. This essay urges them to reject biological racial realism, which bears reminiscences to 19th-century racial science, and embrace the variable of race as a social construct to study social inequalities in health as a first step toward moving away from the legacies of past injustices in medicine. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(S3):S250-S257. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307554).

Ryssia Wolfsohn's 1907 dissertation on "the heredity of dementia praecox".

In the 19th century, psychiatric genetic studies typically utilized a generic category of "insanity." This began to change after 1899, with the publication of Kraepelin's 6th edition containing, among other disorders, his mature concept of dementia praecox (DP). We here review an article published by Ryssia Wolfsohn in 1907 from her dissertation at the University of Zurich entitled "Die Heredität bei Dementia praecox" (The Heredity of Dementia Praecox). This work, performed under the supervision of E. Bleuler, was to our knowledge the first formal genetic study of the then new diagnosis of DP. She investigated 550 DP probands admitted to the Burghölzli hospital with known information about their "heredity burden." For most probands, she had information on parents, siblings, grandparents, and aunts/uncles. Of these patients, only 10% had no psychiatric illness in their families. In the remaining probands, she found rates of the four major categories of psychopathology she investigated: mental illness-56%, nervous disorders-19%, peculiar personalities 12% and alcoholism 13%. Her most novel analyses compared either total familial burden or burden of her four forms of mental disorders on her DP probands divided by subtype and outcome. In neither of these analyses, did she find significant differences.

The 'social' in psychiatry and mental health: quantification, mental illness and society in international scientific networks (1920s-1950s).

The post-World War II international mental health movement placed significant emphasis on the concept of the 'social environment', a true paradigm shift in thinking about the causes of mental illness. Rather than focusing on individual risk factors, experts and policy-makers began to consider the interplay between social context and mental health and illness. Also, during this period, quantification gained prominence within the expanding field of Western psychiatry. Eventually, the concept of the 'social' became fragmented into quantifiable social determinants that could be correlated with mental illness and subjected to systematic neutralization. This trajectory paved the way for the prevailing biomedical psychiatric epidemiology. This broader inquiry challenges us to redefine our understanding of the 'social' in the context of mental health research and practice.

el degeneracionismo al exterminio en la psiquiatría nazi. De Arthur de Gobineau y Benedict Morel a Emil Kraepelin y Ernst Rüdin / From degenerationism to extermination in nazi psychiatry. From Arthur de Gobineau and Benedict Morel to Emil Kraepelin and Ernst Rüdin

Este artículo analiza, a partir el vínculo entre psiquiatría y antropología, cómo se consolidó un discurso organicista capaz de legitimar el exterminio nazi y las políticas eugenésicas en los países democráticos. Partimos del degeneracionismo del siglo XIX y contrastamos la vertiente étnica y racial de Arthur de Gobineau con la vertiente alienista de Benedict Morel, hasta llegar a la síntesis de Cesare Lombroso. Visibilizamos el vínculo que Emil Kraepelin estableció entre la “degeneración” de los individuos y la de las razas, señalando al pueblo judío, como determinante en la consolidación científica de la Rassenhygiene en la que Adolf Hitler fundamentó su Mein Kampf. Destacamos como la justificación para “destruir la vida indigna de ser vivida”, que emergió desde el ensamblaje entre la psiquiatría y la justicia, fue determinante en la transición del III Reich entre la esterilización forzosa y el exterminio. Abordamos el Programa de Eutanasia forzosa a través del importante papel político de Ernst Rüdin, sucesor de Kraepelin y fundador de la psiquiatría genética. Concluimos que el nacionalsocialismo llevó a su máxima expresión la lógica de muerte inscrita en el degeneracionismo. Finalmente, tras una reflexión sobre las reacciones y alternativas de posguerra, destacamos la persistencia contemporánea tanto del determinismo biológico como de la desigualdad legal que marcaron el destino de las primeras víctimas del exterminio nazi.(AU)

This article analyses, from the link between psychiatry and anthropology, how an organicist discourse capable of legitimizing both, nazi extermination and eugenic policies in democratic countries, was consolidated. We depart from 19th century theory of degeneration and contrast the ethnic and racial facet of Arthur de Gobineau with the alienist facet of Benedict Morel, until reaching the synthesis of Cesare Lombroso. We highlight the link that Emil Kraepelin established between the “degeneration” of individuals and that of races, pointing out to the Jews, as determinative in the scientific consolidation of Rassenhygiene in which Adolf Hitler based its Mein Kampf. We stress the justification for “destroying life unworthy of live”, that emerged from the assemblage between psychiatry and justice, as determinant in the Third Reich transition between forced sterilization and extermination. We approach the forced Euthanasia Program through the important political role of Ernst Rüdin, Kraepelin’s successor and founder of genetic psychiatry. We conclude that National Socialism took to its maximum expression the logic of death inscribed in the theory of degeneration. Finally, after a reflection on post-war reactions and alternatives, we highlight the contemporary persistence of both biological determinism and legal inequality that marked the fate of the first victims of nazi extermination.(AU)

[The Biography and Achievements of Japanese Psychiatrist Syuzo Kure].

Syuzo Kure (1865-1932) was the founder of modern psychiatry in Japan and one of the pioneers of the study on the Japanese medical history. He introduced the modern hospital system and psychiatric research, actively promoted the improvement of the treatment of the mental disorders.He was the founder of the Japanese Psychiatric Neurological Association and the Journal of Neurology, and also promoted the establishment of the Charity Treatment Association for the Mentally ill.At the same time, he excavated and sorted out the historical materials of psychiatry, and founded the Japanese Medical History Society.While the medical social history is heating up in China, it is of many significance to pay attention to the study of psychiatric history and a representative figure like Syuzo Kure.

The BJPsych: from asylum to psychiatry by dint of mental science.

After thanking his predecessors, the newly appointed College Editor and Editor-in-Chief of The British Journal of Psychiatry, Professor Gin Malhi, outlines both the historical and personal significance of the journal in this proemial editorial.

The psychopathic hospital.

A new psychiatric institution emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the psychopathic hospital. This institution represented a significant development in the history of psychiatry, as it marked the profession's reorientation from asylum-based to hospital-based care, and in this way presaged the deinstitutionalization movement that would begin half a century later. Psychopathic hospitals were also an important marker of psychiatry's efforts to redefine its professional boundaries and respond to its vociferous critics. This entailed both a rapprochement with general medicine in an effort to assert its scientific bona fides and a redefinition of its scope of practice to absorb non-certifiable 'borderland' cases in order both to emphasize non-coercive treatment and to enlarge the profession's boundaries.

'The poetry of psychiatry': existential analysis and the politics of psychopathology in Franco's Spain.

This article examines the presence and influence of the work of Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger and existential analysis (Daseinsanalyse) in Spanish psychiatry in the central decades of the 20th century. First, and drawing on various printed and archival sources, it reconstructs the important personal and professional ties that Binswanger maintained with numerous Spanish colleagues and describes the notable dissemination of his work in Spain through bibliographical reviews, scientific events, academic reports, university lectures and translations. Next, it reviews the incorporation of the postulates of existential analysis into the discourse of Spanish psychiatrists and assesses their most elaborate and original contributions to the foundations of 'anthropological-existential' psychiatry or the 'existential-analytical' interpretation of certain disorders or clinical conditions. And, finally, it tries to clarify the assessment according to which the (inevitable) instrumentalisation of existential analysis in the context of Franco's Spain first compromised the critical recognition of its true possibilities (and limits) and later contributed to the discrediting of psychopathological research among Spanish psychiatrists.

[Stoyan Todorov Stoyanov: contribution to the development of psychiatry (to the 100th anniversary of his birth)]. / Stoyan Todorov Stoyanov: vklad v razvitie psikhiatrii (k 100-letiyu so dnya rozhdeniya).

The year 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of the eminent Bulgarian psychiatrist Stoyan Todorov Stoyanov.

The history of Danish neuroscience.

The history of Danish neuroscience starts with an account of impressive contributions made at the 17th century. Thomas Bartholin was the first Danish neuroscientist, and his disciple Nicolaus Steno became internationally one of the most prominent neuroscientists in this period. From the start, Danish neuroscience was linked to clinical disciplines. This continued in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries with new initiatives linking basic neuroscience to clinical neurology and psychiatry in the same scientific environment. Subsequently, from the middle of the 20th century, basic neuroscience was developing rapidly within the preclinical university sector. Clinical neuroscience continued and was even reinforced during this period with important translational research and a close co-operation between basic and clinical neuroscience. To distinguish 'history' from 'present time' is not easy, as many historical events continue in present time. Therefore, we decided to consider 'History' as new major scientific developments in Denmark, which were launched before the end of the 20th century. With this aim, scientists mentioned will have been born, with a few exceptions, no later than the early 1960s. However, we often refer to more recent publications in documenting the developments of initiatives launched before the end of the last century. In addition, several scientists have moved to Denmark after the beginning of the present century, and they certainly are contributing to the present status of Danish neuroscience-but, again, this is not the History of Danish neuroscience.

The epistemologies of research on the survival of consciousness after death in the golden era of the Society for Psychical Research (1882-1930).

The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) of London was founded in 1882 with the purpose of investigating psychical phenomena, especially the theme of survival, with scientific rigour. Despite the recognized importance of the SPR for dynamic psychiatry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are few studies of its epistemological contributions to the theme of survival and its implications to science. In order to fill this gap, we have consulted the main journals of the SPR in its golden period, and highlight the epistemologies of Sidgwick, Myers, James, Podmore, Schiller, Lodge and Richet. We conclude that the authors, whether for or against survival, argued in defence of an expanded science, and looked forward to understanding the complexity of human experience.

La lutte continue: Louis Mars and the genesis of ethnopsychiatry.

The scientific contributions of Western mental health professionals have been lauded and leveraged for global mental health responses to varying degrees of success. In recent years, the necessity of recognizing the inefficiencies of solely etic and Western-based psychological intervention has been reflected in certain decolonial scholars like Frantz Fanon gaining more recognition. Despite this urgent focus on decolonial psychology, there are still others whose work has historically and contemporarily not received a great deal of attention. There is no better example of such a scholar than Dr. Louis Mars, Haiti's first psychiatrist. Mars made a lasting impact on the communities of Haiti by shifting the conversation around Haitian culture and the practice of how people living with a mental illness were treated. Further, he influenced the global practice of psychiatry by coining "ethnopsychiatry" and asserting that non-Western culture should be intimately considered, rather than stigmatized, in treating people around the world. Unfortunately, the significance of his contributions to ethnopsychiatry, ethnodrama, and the subsequent field of psychology has effectively been erased from the disciplinary canon. Indeed, the weight of Mars' psychiatric and political work deserves focus. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Tracing the Roots of Dementia Praecox: Charles Lasègue and his 1852 Essay "Du Délire De Persécutions" (On Persecutory Delusions).

While the evolution of our modern concepts of mania and melancholia over the 19th century is relatively well-understood, no such clear narrative exists for the nonaffective psychotic syndromes that culminated in Kraepelin's concept of dementia praecox in 1899. These narratives were relatively distinct in Germany and France. An important milestone in the French literature is the 1852 essay by the alienist and polymath Charles Lasègue which contained the first detailed modern description of a persecutory delusional syndrome. Lasègue was a careful clinical observer who emphasized a symptomatic approach to psychiatric nosology and was less concerned with course and outcome. He details the evolution of persecutory delusions from increasing referential observations of real events, to the resulting anxious confusion and then the emergence of explanatory delusional beliefs. Once formed, these beliefs, he notes, are relatively impervious to correction. Lasègue was unusual for his time in emphasizing a "first-person perspective" on psychotic experiences, and quotes from his patients in his case history, of which he presents 15. Of these, 12 had auditory hallucinations and 4 passivity phenomena. While conceptualized differently than mid-19th century pre-Kraepelinian German writing on delusional syndromes, and unique on its focus on persecutory delusions, Lasègue's important essay shared a common view on the key features of a broad nonaffective delusional-hallucinatory syndrome. It was this syndrome that Kraepelin, over multiple drafts in the first 6 editions of his textbook from 1883 to 1899, was to divide into his mature concepts of paranoia and the paranoid subtype of dementia praecox.

The examination of Kraepelin's diagnoses of dementia praecox and manic-depressive insanity in pedigrees: Studies of Schuppius in 1912 and Wittermann in 1913.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, a new approach to psychiatric genetics research emerged in Germany from three roots: (i) the wide-spread acceptance of Kraepelin's diagnostic system, (ii) increasing interest in pedigree research, and (iii) excitement about Mendelian models. We review two relevant papers, reporting analyses of, respectively, 62 and 81 pedigrees: S. Schuppius in 1912 and E. Wittermann in 1913. While most prior asylum based studies only reported a patient's "hereditary burden," they examined diagnoses of individual relatives at a particular place in a pedigree. Both authors focused on the segregation of dementia praecox (DP) and manic-depressive insanity (MDI). Schuppius reported that the two disorders frequently co-occurred in his pedigrees while Wittermann found them to be largely independent. Schuppius was skeptical of the feasibility of evaluating Mendelian models in humans. Wittermann, by contrast, with advice from Wilhelm Weinberg, applied algebraic models with proband correction to DP in his sibships with results consistent with autosomal recessive transmission. While he had less data, Wittermann suggested that MDI was likely an autosomal dominant disorder. Both authors were interested in other disorders or traits appearing in pedigrees dense with DP (e.g., idiocy) or MDI (e.g., highly excitable individuals).

Entre mujeres-locas y hombres-psiquiatras: asimetrías emocionales en la sala 20 del Manicomio Provincial de Málaga (1909-1950) / Between female psychiatric patients and male psychiatrists: emotional asymmetries in room 20 of the provincial institute of malaga (1909-1950)

El tipo de relación que se desarrollaba entre un psiquiatra (hombre) y una paciente (mujer) durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, en un psiquiátrico de la periferia como el Manicomio Provincial de Málaga, estuvo marcado por el proceso legitimador de la especialidad, los esfuerzos por encontrar datos positivos en la medicina mental, así como elementos relacionados con la construcción generizada de la locura. Tras la Guerra Civil, veremos el desarrollo de los actos diagnósticos y la aplicación de las terapias de choque en la institución, y como se fue haciendo aún más profunda la brecha relacional entre psiquiatras y “locas”. El objetivo de este trabajo es abordar qué elementos estuvieron presentes en la construcción de las subjetividades de las mujeres-locas de la sala 20, qué regímenes emocionales influyeron en estas relaciones y mostrar, por último, cómo la tecnificación de la terapéutica durante los años 40 dio lugar a la perpetuación y amplificación de una asimetría emocional entre psiquiatras y “mujeres-locas” de la sala 20, circunstancia en la que las mujeres mostraron también sus estrategias de resistencia.(AU)

The type of relationship that was developed between a psychiatrist (male) and a patient (female) during the first half of the 20th century in a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts such as the Provincial Asylum of Malaga, sustained many peculiarities related to the legitimizing process of the specialty, the efforts to find positive data in mental medicine, as well as elements related to the gendered construction of madness. After the Civil War, National Catholicism permeated the diagnostic acts and the application of shock therapies in the institution, deepening the gap between psychiatrists and mad women. The objective of this work is to highlight what elements were present in the construction of the subjectivities of the mad women in room 20, what emotional regimes influenced these relationships and to show, finally, how the technification of therapeutics during the 40s gave rise to the perpetuation and amplification of an emotional asymmetry between psychiatrists and mad women in room 20, a circumstance in which the women also developed their strategies of resistance.(AU)

Classic Text No. 135: 'On inheritance of the insanities', by Jens Chr. Smith (1924).

Serious and realistic research into the inheritance of the psychoses started in earnest at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was encouraged by both the acceptance of the Kraepelinian classification and the rediscovery of the Mendelian model of inheritance. The application of Mendelian rules to the very complex genetics of the psychoses led to agonizing debate. The Classic Text is a translation of the introduction of the doctoral thesis of Jens Chr. Smith, a little-known Danish psychiatrist who was able to summarize, with the enthusiasm typical to his youth and with surprising accuracy, the early stages of the debate mentioned above.

Naming psychiatry: apropos earliest use of the term by Karl Friedrich Burdach (1800).

The term psychiatry (Psychiatrie) was first used in 1800, in the early work of Leipzig Romantic natural philosopher and later neuroanatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach; it was a recherché reference to medical animism. This little-known instance of neologism by a young ambitious author invites a brief lexicological study of psychiatry as a specialty in search of its place among the medical specialties, methods and applications. The European historical lexicology of psychiatry recalls the philosophical commentary tradition on Aristotle's De Anima, eventually (c. 1525) honoured with the mononym psychologia. The battle for the soul's science was superseded by the increasingly diverse theoretical, empirical, forensic and literary-humanitarian interests in mental medicine during the second half of the eighteenth century.