„Patologie duszy”. Ludwik Sztyrmer i narodziny psychiatrii
“The Pathologies of the Soul.” Ludwik Sztyrmer and the Birth of Psychiatry

Summary/Abstract: Romantic culture can be really considered a predecessor of anti-psychiatry movement which in the 1960s united the opponents of institutional psychiatry recognized as the tool of social control. To achieve this I analyse chosen texts by doctors practicing in the first half of nineteenth century (such as Józef Jakubowski). They include stories reporting visits at asylums popular in the press then and Ludwik Sztyrmer’s novels (Frenofagiusz i Frenolesty of 1843 and a part of a thirteen years older Sleepless night [Noc Bezsenna]). By confronting these press materials with the dogma of moral therapy dominant at that time I formulate the thesis that while the numerous portraits of madmen and madwomen in Romantic literature may indeed contain some intuitions similar to those of anti-psychiatrists, the same cannot be said about the images of asylums, which definitely formed a part of the discourse where madness was a label enabling an exclusion of inconvenient individuals.

• Details
• Contents