scholarly journals Music and Moral Management in the Nineteenth-Century English Lunatic Asylum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Golding
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Moral Management

Balaam and Bedlam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
Edinburgh Review ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Quarterly Review ◽  
Forensic Rhetoric

This chapter shows how contemporary reviews of Romantic poetry, and the hostile rhetoric of insanity they used, both stigmatized and popularized the Romantic mad poet. A forensic rhetoric, drawing directly on medical ideas of partial insanity and critical ‘moral management’, was deployed by the periodical press in the first quarter of the nineteenth century—first the quarterlies like the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review, then later new capricious and aggressive magazines such as Blackwood’s, and more quotidian or staid journals—against all of the major Romantic poets. The chapter shows, moreover, how the polemical terms in which Romantic poets were dismissed also held the seeds of their later canonization. The periodical critics, while they used slurs of meaningless insanity to dismiss poetry for political and reactionary ends, also spread the fame of ‘mad genius’, turning a marginalized opinion on the link between creativity and disorder into a cultural phenomenon.

scholarly journals Imperfect Models: The Kingston Lunatic Asylum Scandal and the Problem of Postemancipation Imperialism

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christienna D. Fryar
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Public Health Policy ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Colonial Institutions ◽  
Imperial Governance ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article examines an imperial scandal concerning the treatment of patients in the lunatic asylum of Kingston, Jamaica, that highlighted the inadequacies of the imperial government. A significant moment in the development of colonial public health policy, this scandal also spoke to broader questions of postemancipation imperial governance. At the heart of the scandal was a debate about whether standards of treatment developed in Britain—symbolized by the image of the ideal asylum and the ideology of moral management—could and should be implemented in colonies. This debate was all the more fraught because the designation of moral management as the official protocol was recent, its implementation incomplete, and its underlying ideas contested. Nevertheless, despite the instability of these ideas, during the scandal and its aftermath, actors treated them as a monolithic package of standards before making them the definitive model for all colonial institutions. Indeed, the scandal helped further bolster moral management in Britain.

CURE, CLASSIFICATION, AND JOHN CLARE

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Faubert
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Physical Restraints ◽  
John Clare ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Medical Approach

THE NINETEENTH CENTURYis an important period in the history of psychiatry. According to the accepted narrative about the development of psychiatry as a field, in October of 1793, Philippe Pinel freed the patients at Bicêtre, the hospital for the insane in Paris. This act “heralded a new attitude to the insane,” as Pinel “abolished brutal repression” and “replaced it by a humanitarian medical approach” (Hunter 603). The French physician's approach to madness was officially brought to English soil when his text,A Treatise on Insanity, was translated into English in 1806 by D. D. Davis. His methods then began to appear in English practice and positively bloomed by mid century, particularly in the form of moral management, which advocated freeing patients of physical restraints and emphasizing their abilities to monitor their own behavior, while re-educating them about social mores and expectations (Showalter 27). The period from 1790 to 1850 has been called “the birth of psychiatry” (Donnelly viii).

scholarly journals Sexual abuse by superintending staff in the nineteenth-century lunatic asylum: medical practice, complaint and risk

2020 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2096729
Author(s):  
Cara Dobbing ◽  
Alannah Tomkins
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
The West ◽  
Medical Specialization ◽  
Medical Careers ◽  
The Press

The nineteenth century witnessed a great shift in how insanity was regarded and treated. Well documented is the emergence of psychiatry as a medical specialization and the role of lunatic asylums in the West. Unclear are the relationships between the heads of institutions and the individuals treated within them. This article uses two cases at either end of the nineteenth century to demonstrate sexual misdemeanours in sites of mental health care, and particularly how they were dealt with, both legally and in the press. They illustrate issues around cultures of complaint and the consequences of these for medical careers. Far from being representative, they highlight the need for further research into the doctor–patient relationship within asylums, and what happened when the boundaries were blurred.

Basil and No Name

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Ifill
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mental Deterioration ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Individual Personality ◽  
The Will ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
The Individual ◽  
William Benjamin Carpenter

Basil’s Robert Mannion, and No Name’s Magdalen Vanstone are both subject to monomaniacal impulses. In Basil, Collins draws on early-nineteenth-century theories of insanity and moral management, promoted by “alienists” such as John Connolly and J. C. Prichard, which warned of domination by unruly passions. Mannion allows himself to be swept away by his uncontrolled emotions, and therefore contributes to his own mental deterioration. In No Name, Collins makes use of mid-Victorian theories of the will, developed by mental physiologists such as William Benjamin Carpenter, to depict Magdalen as someone who has not been trained to manage her willpower correctly and is therefore overwhelmed by a monomaniacal urge when faced with sudden tragedy. Unlike Mannion, Magdalen also possesses intrinsic reserves of moral strength and endures a series of internal conflicts between her monomania and her ‘better’ nature. In his contemplation of the different aspects which comprise the individual personality, Collis asserts (and so counters mid-century associationist psychology as propounded by men like Alexander Bain) that we are not ‘born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper’, but also insists that our inborn traits may be cultivated for better or for worse.

scholarly journals ‘Appeasing the Unstrung Mental Faculties’: Listening to Music in Nineteenth-Century Lunatic Asylums

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-425
Author(s):  
Rosemary Golding
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Controlled Environment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Set Up ◽  
New Institutions

Listening to music found a new context during the early nineteenth century, in the shape of large, closed institutions set up to house and treat the insane. In response to social reform as well as a growing problem of mental health, lunatic asylums for paupers were set up across Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. Replacing the previous practices of restraint and containment, a system of ‘moral management’ dominated the new asylums. Patients’ lives were kept busy and ordered, with careful attention given to their employment, their diet and their recreational activities. Music played an important part in establishing the routine of the new institutions. Formal dances offered a social occasion and a controlled environment within which the two sexes could meet. Both dances and concerts were used as a reward for patient behaviour, encouraging the kind of self-control which was seen as crucial to recovery and rehabilitation. Musical events acted as a diversion from the grim realities of institutional life and played an important role in allowing patients to engage with religious observance. Musical experience could be active or passive; patients might engage by dancing or making music of their own, and their music might be symptomatic of illness or wellbeing. Using documents including formal records, patient notes and newspaper reports, it is possible to investigate some of the ways in which listening to music played a therapeutic role, and the place of musical experience in the lives of asylum patients.

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