I have been frequently obliged to give expression to my views on asylums and their future organisation. These views are expressed in official documents and private letters, which have never been published. A few observations which I made cursorily at the Naturforscher-Versammlung, in Hanover (“Zeitschr. f. Psychiatrie, “XXII., p. 390), as an indication of my point of view, were much too briefly and aphoristically given not to be subject to misconception. I therefore propose to devote the following pages to a connected, though necessarily brief, explanation of what I believe to be necessary or advantageous in the immediate future arrangement of lunacy matters in Germany, and to indicate towards which side I lean in the undoubted crisis which the question of the public provision for the insane has now reached. I apprehend neither detriment nor danger in this crisis, which is merely the progress towards more complete organisation. To wish to ignore it would not improve the matter. The predetermined conclusion to see the only good and right possible in things as they now exist is a far greater hindrance to the discovery of truth. If science can present new points of view, if urgent wants are brought to light, which cannot be satisfied by the present means of publicly providing for the insane, the requirements must not, in such circumstances, be ignored or denied, but the means must be made to suit the necessities. It was in this way that things were treated when the present asylums were founded; and is it possible that at the present time no further advance can be made ? It is, however, to be remarked, as was said a few years ago by Damerow, who was for the most part an authority with the opponents of reform (“Zeit-schr. f. Psychiatrie, “XIX., 1862, p. 187), “There is nothing further to be obtained in the future with the present public institutions for the cure and care of the insane.”
Commentary: Cultivating the Possible
