Beyond the Asylum

E. Edington Claire

Description

This book is a must-read for any specialist in the history of colonial and post-colonial psychiatry, as well as a fantastic case study for those interested in the social history of European colonialism more generally. ChoiceClaire Edington's fascinating look at psychiatric care in French colonial Vietnam challenges our notion of the colonial asylum as a closed setting, run by experts with unchallenged authority, from which patients rarely left. She shows instead a society in which Vietnamese communities and families actively participated in psychiatric decision-making in ways that strengthened the power of the colonial state, even as they also forced French experts to engage with local understandings of, and practices around, insanity. Beyond the Asylum reveals how psychiatrists, colonial authorities, and the Vietnamese public debated both what it meant to be abnormal, as well as normal enough to return to social life, throughout the early twentieth century.Straddling the fields of colonial history, Southeast Asian studies and the history of medicine, Beyond the Asylum shifts our perspective from the institution itself to its relationship with the world beyond its walls. This world included not only psychiatrists and their patients, but also prosecutors and parents, neighbors and spirit mediums, as well as the police and local press. How each group interacted with the mentally ill, with each other, and sometimes in opposition to each other, helped decide the fate of those both in and outside the colonial asylum.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Abnormal psychology
• Vietnam
• Southeast Asia
• Psychology
• History of medicine
• History of Asia
• Viêt Nam

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501733949
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

BEYOND THE ASYLUM

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

The Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University were inaugurated in 1962 to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia.

BEYOND THE ASYLUM

ME NTAL I L L NESS I N F RE NCH COLONI AL VI E T NAM

C l a i r e E . E d i n gto n

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges the role of the Association for Asian Studies First Book Subvention Program for its support of this book.

Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2019 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Edington, Claire, 1984– author. Title: Beyond the asylum : mental illness in French  colonial Vietnam / Claire Edington. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press,  2019. | Series: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian  Institute, Columbia University | Includes bibliographical  references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018041940 (print) | LCCN 2018047923  (ebook) | ISBN 9781501733956 (epub/mobi) |  ISBN 9781501733949 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501733932(cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Mental illness—Social aspects—Vietnam—  History. | Mentally ill—Care—Vietnam—History. |  Mentally ill—Vietnam—Social conditions. |  Psychiatry—Vietnam—History. | Psychiatric hospitals—  Vietnam—History. Classification: LCC RC451.V5 (ebook) | LCC RC451.V5  E35 2019 (print) | DDC 362.2/109597—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041940

Cover photograph: Biên Hòa Asylum, 19201929. Courtesy of user manhhai, flickr.com.

For Dan

What are these pavilions on the side of the road, Enquires the voyager who goes joyfully Towards the mountains or the sea, to enjoy the best Of holidays while putting worries to the side?

That they appear elegant with their vaulted flowers, Their green foliage mounting high towards the skies, Their grassy patios for the pleasure of eyes, And over there, in the distance, the mellow beauty of the setting sun. Do not judge them too much, friend, on appearance, All while maintaining a full pardon: Those “afflicted by god” serving at the house, Those who know the worst of Gehenna, Fighting without respite against their loss of reason, Knowledge, Kindness will not ease their pain.

Pélissier, Administrator of Civil Services, Saigon, January 7, 1945 Dedicated to Dr. Baccialone, director of the Psychiatric Hospital of Biên Hòa, and his “devoted collaborators”

Co nte nts

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Writing the Social History of Psychiatry in French Colonial Vietnam

1. A Background to Confinement: The Legal Category of the “Insane” Person in French Indochina 2. Patients, Staff, and the Everyday Challenges of Asylum Administration 3. Labor as Therapy: Agricultural Colonies, Study Trips, and the Psychiatric Reeducation of the Insane 4. Going In and Getting Out of the Colonial Asylum: Families and the Politics of Caregiving 5. Mental illness and Treatment Advice in the Vietnamese Popular Press 6. Psychiatric Expertise and Indochina’s Crime Problem  Conclusion: Continuities and Change in Postcolonial Vietnam

Notes 221 Bibliography 267 Index 283

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I l lu s t r at i o n s

Maps Colonial possessions in Southeast Asia French Indochina

Figures  1. Entrance to the Biên Hòa asylum, 1934  2. European pavilion, Biên Hòa, 1931  3. Blueprint of the Biên Hòa asylum, Cochinchina, 1927  4. Scaled model of Biên Hòa handmade by patients and asylum guards, 1931  5. Drawing of pavilion for “calm patients” at Biên Hòa, 1927  6. Model of the typical cell for patients in the “agitated wing” at Biên Hòa, 1927  7. Table of patient numbers and days of hospitalization at Biên Hòa, 1919–34  8. Chart of annual patient admittances at Biên Hòa, 1919–34  9.Plans for a Ushape pavilion, to be installed at the Vôi asylum in Tonkin, 1927 10. Admission building at Vôi 11. Inside courtyard of Vôi 12. Inside of a pavilion for “calm” Vietnamese patients at Vôi 13. Overview of the insane asylum near Buitenzorg 14. Patients weaving mats at Biên Hòa 15. Patients in the courtyard of Biên Hòa 16. Patients tending to a vegetable garden at Vôi 17. Patients helping with the preparation of meals at Vôi 18. Animal stables at Vôi 19. Patients at Vôi preparing the fields for rice cultivation

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