Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society PDF Author: Stef Eastoe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030273350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book explores the understudied history of the so-called ‘incurables’ in the Victorian period, the people identified as idiots, imbeciles and the weak-minded, as opposed to those thought to have curable conditions. It focuses on Caterham, England’s first state imbecile asylum, and analyses its founding, purpose, character, and most importantly, its residents, innovatively recreating the biographies of these people. Created to relieve pressure on London’s overcrowded workhouses, Caterham opened in September 1870. It was originally intended as a long-stay institution for the chronic and incurable insane paupers of the metropolis, more commonly referred to as idiots and imbeciles. This purpose instantly differentiates Caterham from the more familiar, and more researched, lunatic asylums, which were predicated on the notion of cure and restoration of the senses. Indeed Caterham, built following the welfare and sanitary reforms of the late 1860s, was an important feature of the Victorian institutional landscape, and it represented a shift in social, medical and political responsibility towards the care and management of idiot and imbecile paupers.

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society

Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society PDF Author: Stef Eastoe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030273350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book

Book Description
This book explores the understudied history of the so-called ‘incurables’ in the Victorian period, the people identified as idiots, imbeciles and the weak-minded, as opposed to those thought to have curable conditions. It focuses on Caterham, England’s first state imbecile asylum, and analyses its founding, purpose, character, and most importantly, its residents, innovatively recreating the biographies of these people. Created to relieve pressure on London’s overcrowded workhouses, Caterham opened in September 1870. It was originally intended as a long-stay institution for the chronic and incurable insane paupers of the metropolis, more commonly referred to as idiots and imbeciles. This purpose instantly differentiates Caterham from the more familiar, and more researched, lunatic asylums, which were predicated on the notion of cure and restoration of the senses. Indeed Caterham, built following the welfare and sanitary reforms of the late 1860s, was an important feature of the Victorian institutional landscape, and it represented a shift in social, medical and political responsibility towards the care and management of idiot and imbecile paupers.

Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England

Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England PDF Author: Alison C. Pedley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350275344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Tracing the experiences of women who were designated insane by judicial processes from 1850 to 1900, this book considers the ideas and purposes of incarceration in three dedicated facilities: Bethlem, Fisherton House and Broadmoor. The majority of these patients had murdered, or attempted to murder, their own children but were not necessarily condemned as incurably evil by medical and legal authorities, nor by general society. Alison C. Pedley explores how insanity gave the Victorians an acceptable explanation for these dreadful crimes, and as a result, how admission to a dedicated asylum was viewed as the safest and most human solution for the 'madwomen' as well as for society as a whole. Mothers, Criminal Insanity and the Asylum in Victorian England considers the experiences, treatments and regimes women underwent in an attempt to redeem and rehabilitate them, and return them to into a patriarchal society. It shows how society's views of the institutions and insanity were not necessarily negative or coloured by fear and revulsion, and highlights the changes in attitudes to female criminal lunacy in the second half of the 19th century. Through extensive and detailed research into the three asylums' archives and in legal, governmental, press and genealogical records, this book sheds new light on the views of the patients themselves, and contributes to the historiography of Victorian criminal lunatic asylums, conceptualising them as places of recovery, rehabilitation and restitution.

Out of his mind

Out of his mind PDF Author: Amy Milne-Smith
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526155044
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Out of His Mind interrogates how Victorians made sense of the madman as both a social reality and a cultural representation. Even at the height of enthusiasm for the curative powers of nineteenth-century psychiatry, to be certified as a lunatic meant a loss of one’s freedom and in many ways one’s identify. Because men had the most power and authority in Victorian Britain, this also meant they had the most to lose. The madman was often a marginal figure, confined in private homes, hospitals, and asylums. Yet as a cultural phenomenon he loomed large, tapping into broader social anxieties about respectability, masculine self-control, and fears of degeneration. Using a wealth of case notes, press accounts, literature, medical and government reports, this text provides a rich window into public understandings and personal experiences of men’s insanity.

Pathways of Patients at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890 to 1907

Pathways of Patients at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890 to 1907 PDF Author: Rory du Plessis
Publisher: Pretoria University Law Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
About the publication Pathways of patients explores the casebooks of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum during the superintendence of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees, from 1890 to 1907. The hallmark of Pathways of patients is an examination of the asylum’s casebooks to bring into view the humanity of the patients, their distinct personal experiences, and their individuality. The book is underpinned by an allied goal to retrieve the casebook narratives of the patients’ life stories, their acts of agency, and their pathways to and from the asylum, with a view to understanding and portraying the context of patient experiences at the time.

The Working Class at Home, 1790–1940

The Working Class at Home, 1790–1940 PDF Author: Joseph Harley
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030892735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This book examines life in the homes inhabited by the working class over the long nineteenth century. These working-class homes are often imagined as distinctly unhomely spaces, which the inhabitants struggled to fill with even the most basic of furniture, let alone acquire the comforts associated with middle-class domestic space. The concerned reformers of industrialising towns and cities painted a picture of severe deprivation, of rooms that were both cramped yet bare at the same time, and disease-ridden spaces from which their subjects required rescue. It is an image which is not only inadequate, but which also robs working-class people of their agency in creating domestic spaces which allowed for the expression of personal and familial feeling. Bringing together emerging scholars who challenge these ideas and using a range of innovative sources and approaches, this edited collection presents a new understanding of working-class homes.

Mental Disability in Victorian England

Mental Disability in Victorian England PDF Author: David Wright
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191554359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book contributes to the growing scholarly interest in the history of disability by investigating the emergence of 'idiot' asylums in Victorian England. Using the National Asylum for Idiots, Earlswood, as a case-study, it investigates the social history of institutionalization, privileging the relationship between the medical institution and the society whence its patients came. By concentrating on the importance of patient-centred admission documents, and utilizing the benefits of nominal record linkage to other, non-medical sources, David Wright extends research on the confinement of the 'insane' to the networks of care and control that operated outside the walls of the asylum. He contends that institutional confinement of mentally disabled and mentally ill individuals in the nineteenth century cannot be understood independently of a detailed analysis of familial and community patterns of care. In this book, the family plays a significant role in the history of the asylum, initiating the identification of mental disability, participating in the certification process, mediating medical treatment, and facilitating discharge back into the community. By exploring the patterns of confinement to the Earlswood Asylum, Professor Wright reveals the diversity of the 'insane' population in Victorian England and the complexities of institutional committal in the nineteenth century. Moreover, by investigating the evolution of the Earlswood Asylum, it examines the history of the institution where John Langdon Down made his now famous identification of 'Mongolism', later renamed Down's Syndrome. He thus places the formulation of this archetype of mental disability within its historical, cultural, and scientific contexts.

Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c.1918-1939

Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c.1918-1939 PDF Author: Jane Freebody
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031131053
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
This open access book demonstrates that, while occupation has been used to treat the mentally disordered since the early nineteenth century, approaches to its use have varied across different countries and in different time periods. Comparing how occupation was used in French and English mental institutions between 1918 and 1939, one hundred years after the heyday of moral therapy, the book is an essential read for those researching the history of mental health and medicine more generally. It provides an overview of the legislation, management structures and financial conditions that affected mental institutions in France and England, and contributed to their differing responses to the new theories of occupational therapy emerging from the USA and Germany during the interwar period.

California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970

California and the Politics of Disability, 1850–1970 PDF Author: Eileen V. Wallis
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031217144
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This book explores the political, legal, medical, and social battles that led to the widespread institutionalization of Californians with disabilities from the gold rush to the 1970s. By the early twentieth century, most American states had specialized facilities dedicated to both the care and the control of individuals with disabilities. Institutions reflect the lived historical experience of many Americans with disabilities in this era. Yet we know relatively little about how such state institutions fit into specific regional, state, or local contexts west of the Mississippi River; how those contexts shaped how institutions evolved over time; or how regional institutions fit into the USA’s contentious history of care and control of Americans with mental and developmental disabilities. This book examines how medical, social, and political arguments that individuals with disabilities needed to be institutionalized became enshrined in state law in California through the creation of a “bureaucracy of disability.” Using Los Angeles County as a case study, the book also considers how the friction between state and county policy in turn influenced the treatment of individuals within such facilities. Furthermore, the book tracks how the mission and methods of such institutions evolved over time, culminating in the 1960s with the birth of the disability rights movement and the complete rewriting of California’s laws on the treatment and rights of Californians with disabilities. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of California and the American West and for anyone interested in how the intersections of disability, politics, and activism shaped our historical understanding of life for Americans with disabilities.

Psychology Around Us

Psychology Around Us PDF Author: Nancy Ogden
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111964531X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 930

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Book Description
Psychology Around Us, Fourth Canadian Edition offers students a wealth of tools and content in a structured learning environment that is designed to draw students in and hold their interest in the subject. Psychology Around Us is available with WileyPLUS, giving instructors the freedom and flexibility to tailor curated content and easily customize their course with their own material. It provides today's digital students with a wide array of media content — videos, interactive graphics, animations, adaptive practice — integrated at the learning objective level to provide students with a clear and engaging path through the material. Psychology Around Us is filled with interesting research and abundant opportunities to apply concepts in a real-life context. Students will become energized by the material as they realize that Psychology is "all around us."

Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa

Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa PDF Author: Jenni Lauwrens
Publisher: Pretoria University Law Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
About the publication Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa presents a diversity of views on the nature and status of the body in relation to acting, advertisements, designs, films, installations, music, photographs, performance, typography, and video works. Applying the methodologies of phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, embodied perception, ecological psychology, and sense-based research, the authors place the body at the centre of their analyses. The cornerstone of the research presented here is the view that aesthetic experience is active and engaged rather than passive and disinterested. This novel volume offers a rich and diverse range of applications of the paradigm of embodiment to the arts in South Africa. Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgments Notes on contributors PART 1 Conceptualising embodiment and the arts Chapter 1 Embodiment and the arts in context Jenni Lauwrens 1 Plotting a course 2 Embodiment 3 Aesthetic embodiment 4 The sensorium 5 Too deep for words? 6 Overview of chapters Chapter 2 Enactive cognition in improvising musical ensembles: A South African perspective Marc Duby 1 Introduction 2 The promise of embodied cognition 3 4E cognition: A brief overview 4 Musicking and enactive cognition 5 Conclusion PART 2: Sensory scholarship Chapter 3 Sight/site-specific recording: Embodiment and absence Marc Röntsch 1 Introduction 2 Background 3 Embodiment and artistic research 4 Jazz ensemble playing 5 Blinding 6 On absence 7 Conclusion Chapter 4 The art of touch in remote online environments Jenni Lauwrens 1 Introduction 2 The significance and boundaries of touch 3 Out of touch 4 Holding hands over the internet: Telepresence, co-presence and the promise of digital touch 5 Chasing the Holy Grail of touch 6 Haptic visuality and the memory of touch 7 Conclusion Chapter 5 Outer space and sensory deprivation (or why is outer space so bland?) Amanda du Preez 1 Introduction 2 On blandness 3 What does outer space smell, taste and look like? 4 Falling down or falling up? 5 Gravity mimicked 6 Unfolding within the fourfold 7 Conclusion Chapter 6 The typographic sensorium: A cross-modal reading of letterforms Kyle Rath 1 Introduction: Function(s) of type 2 Design and the typographic sensorium 2.1 Sight: Type as image 2.2 Touch: Type as haptic and kinaesthetic 2.3 Sound: Type as wave-form 2.4 Olfaction: Type as scent and taste 3 Conclusion PART 3: Material presence Chapter 7 A haptic and humanising reading of the subjects of studio portraits and asylum photography in colonial South Africa Rory du Plessis 1 Introduction 2 The Black Photo Album 3 Interpreting photographs from the Orange Free State Asylum, c 1900 3.1 First encounter 3.2 Second encounter 4 Conclusion Chapter 8 Athi-Patra Ruga’s politics of disorientation: Queer(y)ing threads Adéle Adendorff 1 Introduction 2 Spinning tales and fashioning avatars 3 The politics of disorientation 3.1 Queer(y)ing phenomenology 3.2 Miss Congo and the table in the drawing-room 4 Casting off: Tying up loose threads Chapter 9 Seeing an image at the University of Pretoria’s Africana collection in context Sikho Siyotula 1 Introduction 2 The grass at the University of Pretoria’s gates 3 The world visualised in Ethnic map of Southern Africa 4 Visualising the Nguni estate or Shakan period 5 Visualising the Mapungubwe and Zimbabwe estate 6 Conclusion PART 4: Embodied performance and composition Chapter 10 Navigating dissonance: Bodymind and character congruency in acting Èmil Haarhoff, Marth Munro and Marié-Heleen Coetzee 1 Introduction 2 Bodymind and embodiment 3 Acting as an embodied craft 4 Actor-character dissonance and heightened awareness 5 Navigating actor-character dissonance 5.1 Choice and reappraisal 5.2 Actively applying heightened bodymind awareness 6 Conclusion Chapter 11 Advocating the importance of nonverbal communication in multimodal actor training Elri Wium and Janine Lewis 1 Introduction 2 Case control study 3 Nonverbal communication as an analysis model 4 Discussion of syncretic behavioural communication design 5 Data collection and analysis through a mixed-methods approach 5.1 Observation study 5.2 Analysis of habitual characterisation (coded narrative recordings) 5.3 Assessing the semi-structured interviews 6 Conclusion Chapter 12 Embodied composition ontologies, process and technology: Gesture heuristics and creative potential in music Miles Warrington 1 Introduction 2 Creative spaces 3 Compositional approaches, processes and models 3.1 Gesture schemas and embodiment of sound 3.2 Gesture signification 3.3 Problem solving and gesture models 3.4 Hyperinstruments 4 Conclusion Index