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Educated insane: A nineteenth‐century psychiatric paradigm
Author(s) -
Makari George J.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(199301)29:1<8::aid-jhbs2300290103>3.0.co;2-e
Subject(s) - enlightenment , phrenology , harm , psychology , natural (archaeology) , late 19th century , psychiatry , psychoanalysis , history , criminology , medicine , aesthetics , epistemology , social psychology , period (music) , philosophy , archaeology , alternative medicine , pathology
Abstract In the 1830s the time‐honored notion that excess study could lead to madness underwent a significant change in America. Under the influence of Enlightenment pedagogy and phrenology, influential superintendents like Amariah Brigham and Isaac Ray feared that the “unnatural” overstimulation of children in schools would ruin their development. In the second half of the nineteenth century, as belief in environmental determinism waned and assumptions about what is “natural” changed, this psychiatric etiology was debated; then, overthrown. By the turn of the century, education was thought to aid, not harm, the mentally ill.