Administrations of Lunacy

Administrations of Lunacy PDF Author: Mab Segrest
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620972980
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
"Whew! They going to send around here and tie you up and drag you off to Milledgeville. Them fat blue police chasing tomcats around alleys." —Berenice in The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers A scathing and original look at the racist origins of the field of modern psychiatry, told through the story of what was once the largest mental institution in the world, by the prize-winning author of Memoir of a Race Traitor After a decade of research, Mab Segrest, whose Memoir of a Race Traitor forever changed the way we think about race in America, turns sanity itself inside-out in a stunning book that will become an instant classic. In December 1841, the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum was founded on land taken from the Cherokee nation in the then-State capitol of Milledgeville. A hundred years later, it had become the largest insane asylum in the world with over ten thousand patients. To this day, it is the site of the largest graveyard of disabled and mentally ill people in the world. In April, 1949, Ebony magazine reported that for black patients, "the situation approaches Nazi concentration camp standards . . . unbelievable this side of Dante's Inferno." Georgia's state hospital was at the center of psychiatric practice and the forefront of psychiatric thought throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America—centuries during which the South invented, fought to defend, and then worked to replace the most developed slave culture since the Roman Empire. A landmark history of a single insane asylum at Milledgeville, Georgia, A Peculiar Inheritance reveals how modern-day American psychiatry was forged in the traumas of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, when African Americans carrying "no histories" entered from Freedmen's Bureau Hospitals and home counties wracked with Klan terror. This history set the stage for the eugenics and degeneracy theories of the twentieth century, which in turn became the basis for much of Nazi thinking in Europe. Segrest's masterwork will forever change the way we think about our own minds.

Administrations of Lunacy

Administrations of Lunacy PDF Author: Mab Segrest
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620972980
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
"Whew! They going to send around here and tie you up and drag you off to Milledgeville. Them fat blue police chasing tomcats around alleys." —Berenice in The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers A scathing and original look at the racist origins of the field of modern psychiatry, told through the story of what was once the largest mental institution in the world, by the prize-winning author of Memoir of a Race Traitor After a decade of research, Mab Segrest, whose Memoir of a Race Traitor forever changed the way we think about race in America, turns sanity itself inside-out in a stunning book that will become an instant classic. In December 1841, the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum was founded on land taken from the Cherokee nation in the then-State capitol of Milledgeville. A hundred years later, it had become the largest insane asylum in the world with over ten thousand patients. To this day, it is the site of the largest graveyard of disabled and mentally ill people in the world. In April, 1949, Ebony magazine reported that for black patients, "the situation approaches Nazi concentration camp standards . . . unbelievable this side of Dante's Inferno." Georgia's state hospital was at the center of psychiatric practice and the forefront of psychiatric thought throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in America—centuries during which the South invented, fought to defend, and then worked to replace the most developed slave culture since the Roman Empire. A landmark history of a single insane asylum at Milledgeville, Georgia, A Peculiar Inheritance reveals how modern-day American psychiatry was forged in the traumas of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, when African Americans carrying "no histories" entered from Freedmen's Bureau Hospitals and home counties wracked with Klan terror. This history set the stage for the eugenics and degeneracy theories of the twentieth century, which in turn became the basis for much of Nazi thinking in Europe. Segrest's masterwork will forever change the way we think about our own minds.

Memoir of a Race Traitor

Memoir of a Race Traitor PDF Author: Mab Segrest
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620973006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Back in print after more than a decade, the singular chronicle of life at the forefront of antiracist activism, with a new introduction and afterword by the author "Mab Segrest's book is extraordinary. It is a 'political memoir' but its language is poetic and its tone passionate. I started it with caution and finished it with awe and pleasure." —Howard Zinn In 1994, Mab Segrest first explained how she "had become a woman haunted by the dead." Against a backdrop of nine generations of her family's history, Segrest explored her experiences in the 1980s as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent far-right movement in North Carolina. Memoir of a Race Traitor became a classic text of white antiracist practice. bell hooks called it a "courageous and daring [example of] the reality that political solidarity, forged in struggle, can exist across differences." Adrienne Rich wrote that it was "a unique document and thoroughly fascinating." Juxtaposing childhood memories with contemporary events, Segrest described her journey into the heart of her culture, finally veering from its trajectory of violence toward hope and renewal. Now, amid our current national crisis driven by an increasingly apocalyptic white supremacist movement, Segrest returns with an updated edition of her classic book. With a new introduction and afterword that explore what has transpired with the far right since its publication, the book brings us into the age of Trump—and to what can and must be done. Called "a true delight" and a "must-read" (Minnesota Review), Memoir of a Race Traitor is an inspiring and politically potent book. With brand-new power and relevance in 2019, this is a book that far transcends its genre.

Born to Belonging

Born to Belonging PDF Author: Mab Segrest
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813531014
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Veteran activist Mab Segrest takes readers along on her travels to view a world experiencing extraordinary change. As she moves from place to place, she speculates on the effects of globalization and urban development on individuals, examines the struggles for racial, economic, and sexual equality, and narrates her own history as a lesbian in the American South. From the principle that we all belong to the human community, Segrest uses her personal experience as a filter for larger political and cultural issues. Her writings bring together such groups as the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, fledging gay rights activists in Zimbabwe, and resistance fighters in El Salvador. Segrest expertly plumbs her own personal experiences for organizing principles and maxims to combat racism, homophobia, sexism, and economic exploitation.

But for the Grace of God

But for the Grace of God PDF Author: Peter G. Cranford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780557026821
Category : People with mental disabilities
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A scholarly yet absorbing history of one of the best, worst, and largest insane asylums in the world.

An Archaeology of Lunacy

An Archaeology of Lunacy PDF Author: Katherine Fennelly
Publisher: Social Archaeology and Materia
ISBN: 9781526126498
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
An archaeology of lunacy is a materially focused exploration of the first wave of public asylum building in Britain and Ireland, which took place during the late-Georgian and early Victorian period. Examining architecture and material culture, the book proposes that the familiar asylum archetype, usually attributed to the Victorians, was in fact developed much earlier. It looks at the planning and construction of the first public asylums and assesses the extent to which popular ideas about reformed management practices for the insane were applied at ground level. Crucially, it moves beyond doctors and reformers, repopulating the asylum with the myriad characters that made up its everyday existence: keepers, clerks and patients. Contributing to archaeological scholarship on institutions of confinement, the book is aimed at academics, students and general readers interested in the material environment of the historic lunatic asylum.

Life at the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, 1857-1997

Life at the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, 1857-1997 PDF Author: Sarah C. Sitton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781603447393
Category : Mental health services
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The nineteenth-century "cult of curability" engendered the optimistic belief that mental illness could be cured under ideal conditions--removal from the stresses of everyday life to asylum, a pleasant, well-regulated environment where healthy meals, daily exercise, and social contact were the norm. This utopian view led to the reform and establishment of lunatic asylums throughout the United States. The Texas State Lunatic Asylum (later called the Austin State Hospital) followed national trends, and its history documents national mental health practices in microcosm. Drawing on diverse sources--patient records from the nineteenth century, papers and reports of the institution's various superintendents, transcripts of interviews of former employees, newspaper accounts, personal memoirs, and interviews--Sarah C. Sitton has recreated what life in "our little town" was like from the institution's opening in 1861 to its de-institutionalization in the 1980s and 1990s. For more than a century, the asylum community resembled a self-sufficient village complete with its own blacksmith shop, icehouse, movie theater, brass band, baseball team, and undertakers. Beautifully landscaped grounds and gravel lanes attracted locals for Sunday carriage drives. Patients tended livestock, tilled gardens, helped prepare meals, and cleaned wards. Their routines might include weekly dances and religious services, as well as cold tubs, paraldehyde, and electroshock. Employees, from the superintendent on down, lived on the grounds, and their children grew up "with inmates for playmates." While the superintendent exercised almost feudal power, deciding if staff could date or marry, a multigenerational "clan" of several interlinked families controlled its day-to-day operations for decades. With the current emphasis on community-based care for the mentally ill and the negative consequences of de-institutionalization increasingly apparent, the debate on how best to care for the state's--and the nation's--mentally ill continues. This examination offers historical and practical insights which will be of interest to practitioners and policy makers in the field of mental health as well as to individuals interested in the history of the state of Texas.

Admission Register of Central State Hospital, Milledgeville, Georgia, 1842-1861

Admission Register of Central State Hospital, Milledgeville, Georgia, 1842-1861 PDF Author: Paul K. Graham
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780975531280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This book contains the admission record for the first 888 patients admitted to the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia. The hospital, the state's first mental institution, was authorized in 1837 and opened to patients at the end of 1842. Each patient record begins with a list of basic facts, with their name, county of origin, age, marital status, and other facts depending on the particular patient. The introductory information is followed by a description of symptoms that led the patient to the hospital, along with possible causes of illness. Records end with dates of admission then those for elopement (escape), dismission, or death. The number by each individual is the sequential patient number given in early admission records.

A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators

A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators PDF Author: Edward Vaughan Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Executors and administrators
Languages : en
Pages : 966

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Book Description


The Poor Law of Lunacy

The Poor Law of Lunacy PDF Author: Peter Bartlett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567562174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
In The Poor Law of Lunacy, Peter Bartlett examines the legal and administrative regime of the 19th-century asylum, arguing that it is to be thought of as an aspect of English poor law in which the medical superintendent of the asylum has little power. The text also examines the place of the county asylum movement in the poor law debates of the mid-19th century. Using the Leicestershire asylum as a case study, the author looks at the role of the poor law officers in the admission processes of the asylum, and relations between poor law staff, asylum staff and the poor law and lunacy central inspectorates.

A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators

A Treatise on the Law of Executors and Administrators PDF Author: Sir Edward Vaughan Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Executors and administrators
Languages : en
Pages : 936

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Book Description