Overview

This book provides the first comprehensive study of the history of Hungarian psychiatry between 1850 and 1920, placed in both an Austro-Hungarian and wider European comparative framework. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the book captures the institutional worlds of the different types of psychiatric institutions intertwined with the intellectual history of mental illness and the micro-historical study of everyday institutional practice. It uncovers the ways in which psychiatrists gradually organised themselves and their profession, defined their field and role, claimed expertise within the medical sciences, lobbied for legal reform and the establishment of psychiatric institutions, fought for university positions, the establishment of departments and specialised psychiatric teaching. Beyond this story of increasing professionalization, this study also explores how psychiatry became invested in social critique. It shows how psychiatry gradually moved beyond its closely defined disciplinary borders and became a public arena, with psychiatrists broadening their focus from individual patients to society at large, whether through mass publications or participation in popular social movements. Finally, the book examines how psychiatry began to influence the concept of mental health during the first decades of the twentieth century, against the rich social and cultural context of fin-de-siècle Budapest and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.  

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9783030857080

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Reviews

“The volume under review here addresses several interrelated and less-developed dimensions of histoficization: the cfitical history of psychiatry, the inception of public health in East Central Europe, and the interrelation of welfare policy and nation-building. Choosing the nineteenth century as a timeline to frame her histofical reconstruction, Emese L afferton succeeds in interconnecting public health and psychiatry … .” (Victoria Schmidt, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, Vol. 72 (4), 2023)​

“Emese Lafferton’s latest book is the first-ever comprehensive monograph concerning the history of psychiatry in Hungary. It is the result of decades of research … . Students of medical history may also find the book of value, as the case of Hungary can provide insights that are not found in the discussions of psychiatry in the core Western countries that comprise the majority of the English language literature on the topic.” (Attila Kund, Austrian History Yearbook, October 23, 2023) “The volume under review here addresses several interrelated and less-developed dimensions of histoficization: the cfitical history of psychiatry, the inception of public health in East Central Europe, and the interrelation of welfare policy and nation-building. Choosing the nineteenth century as a timeline to frame her histofical reconstruction, Emese L afferton succeeds in interconnecting public health and psychiatry … .” (Victoria Schmidt, Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, Vol. 72 (4), 2023)​

Author Information

Emese Lafferton is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Central European University, Vienna, Austria. She has published a range of articles and book chapters in English on various aspects of the history of psychiatry, medicine and racial sciences in the long nineteenth century. In addition, she has edited several books and thematic journal issues.

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