How did Victorians understand and diagnose mental illness? If a person on trial in a nineteenth-century British courtroom was thought to be suffering from “madness,” the court did not necessarily ask a physician to provide an expert opinion or to diagnose the individual. As Joel Peter Eigen explains, doctors were not respected as expert witnesses…
Tag: Crime
The “Criminal Mind:” Discourses of Mental Health and Crime, Part 3
Abigail Jane Mack “UNLOCK THE POWER OF THE WELLNESS EFFECT.” In white lettering across a cool blue background photograph of happy workers, Prudential Financial touts the employer benefits of financial well-being for employees. The Wellness Effect™ will not only create confident, mentally healthy workers but improve the lives of workers’ families and communities. Following a growing…
The Criminal Mind: Discourses of Mental Health and Crime, Part 2.
Enlarged Photograph from “Brains of Feebleminded and Criminalist Persons,” a display at the 1921 Second International Congress of Eugenics. Part of Myrtelle M. Canavan Papers, 1898-1945, GA 10.20 “Myrtell Used with permission from the Harvard Medical Library. Abigail Jane Mack I began Part 1 of this series with the image I reproduce here. Item number 1552…
The “Criminal Mind”: Discourses of Mental Health and Crime Part 1
Abigail Jane Mack Everything happens for the first time, but in a way that is eternal. -Jorge Luis Borges “We are as we think,” Stanton Samenow writes, concluding Inside the Criminal Mind.[1] The text, now in its third edition, outlines a theory of criminality, which has had enormous though often overlooked impact on psychiatric and…