Emergence of the Psy-ences

Emergence of the Psy-ences On the eve of the 20th c. - Psychiatry began to emerge in 19th century that started off as madness but was soon being understood as mental illness o As a result asylums got built  Problem that there were never enough  And that there wasn’t the ability to treat the patients o Little standardization  Immense diversity among the psychiatrists  Some people that spend a lot time with the mental ill  Clinicians that were using drugs, spa treatment but didn’t even have diagnostic language o All of this lead to psychiatry to be marginalized within medicine  Seen as custodians rather than active healers - Asylums developed bad reputations facing public critique o Some non medical interventions were beginning to be explored  E.g. hypnosis (needed medical degree) but was showing results o Sparked a climate of desperation  Psychiatry was desperate to find cures and methods  Also desperation to find scientific legitimacy  To be respected and engage with new scientific methods just like the rest of medicine The organic school - School of thought that said mental illness is biological o As medicine was developing, people began associate with that and prioritize the bio of mental illness o Seeing it as a problem of brain abnormality - Popular diagnosis like hysteria o Thought it was a result of female bodies - Most common psychiatry problems were GPI General process of insane o Caused by third stage of syphilis o Since they didn’t understand what caused it, he infected the patients with syphilis - Emil Kraephelin was a believer in the organic basis of psychiatry o Argued that mental symptoms should be understood as diseases  Meaning that it could be transmitted, cured, exists and independently o Approach had a lot of influence (inventor of schizophrenia)  Mental illness must be thought of in comparison to its time o He also suggested that instead of examining the brain, its possible to detect the disease through symptoms and behaviour o This way of thinking of mental illness helped push for the idea that peoples psychological problems can be classified as people problems rather than holistically (label and the diagnosis)  Understand the person rather than the diagnosis instead Beyond treatment - Heredity mattered: not only biological but genetically o Argued that has a factor in all sorts of deviancy (insanity and criminality) o One aspect of this argued that over time these people degenerated  As generations passed the problem got worse over time o Arguing that people are stuck in time of evolution - Proposed the criminals and lunatics are people that stopped at an earlier level of evolution o Study of skull shape, people argued that the skull shape can detect mental illness, behaviour - Share the idea that this disease is rooted it in the body - Leads to eugenics movement o Focused on breeding o To explain society falling apart they looked to these o Saying that degenerate people were propagating (having children)  To solve that they proposed this idea of eugenics  Passed laws by making it difficult to get a marriage license (because of mental illness in the past)  Encourage breading good rather than the bad  Forced sterilization  T4 programs  Gas was used on patients because they thought this was the only way to treat this  Scientific racism - These ideas are reflecting interesting of the time: nationalism, fears about moral decay, evolutionary theory Heroic treatments: fevers, comas, and shocks - The reason why its called that is because they were desperate attempts to resolve the cause of mental health problems - Julius Wagner developed the idea that general paresis of the insane could be treatment by giving people a fever o Gave patients malaria and by doing this we can spike a fever and it would therapeutic and solve the problem - Sakel had the idea that these people existed in the state of psychological excitement o He put people in comas through insulin - Meduna argued that epilepsy and schizophrenia cant be together in the same body - o so to fix it he gave people one to get rid of the other electric compulsive treatment o electricity to induce seizures o was then used in MK ultra to brainwash and whether it was possible o ETC has persisted although it remains divisive Psychosurgery - Later known as leucotomy o Egas moniz o Involved drilling a hole in a person heads and removing a part of frontal lobe - Freeman introduced transorbital lobotomy o Was a faster way and going through their eye socket and use an ice pick to remove part of the frontal lobe o Traveled around US in the Lobotomobial on thousands of people o Lost his license because people died Controversies and legacies - Complex treatment o What does it mean for a treatment to work? - One of the defining aspects of the rise of psych disciplines have become a battle of seeing what works the best - Indicative of power imbalances, ethical issues inherent to discipline - Organic school o One legacy is the idea that theres no sense in mental illness  Parts that can become faulty  They began to take that perspective  Product of its biology  Devalued the person and The psychopharmaceutical revolution - Sometimes psychiatry used drugs o The idea that mental illness is best resolved by drugs is old ideas - What it owns itself is chlorpromazine o Drug that would prepare itself through history o Found that this substance induced intense calmness o Quicker, people tolerated it more - At the time it was described by tranquilizer o Anti psychotic implies that it works against psychosis o Tranquilizer suggest that it calms them down  Important because anti psychotic rejects this way of thinking - After success of that, prompted other psychoactive drug experimentation - Ignited therapeutic optimism seemed to promise end to asylums Pharamceuticalisation - Initially adjucts to alleviate deficits rather than treatment itself - Shifts towards enhancements - No longer thinking of how to treatment but instead - Period of intense medicalization Pathways to pharmaceuticals - Some theories: o Fetishization of science and tech  Belief that it can solve all our problem o Pressures and pace of modern - David Hertzberg o Approach it as an objective - Think about how the transition was Patients this silence Limitations of thinking