Colonialism and Transnational Psychiatry

Waltraud Ernst

Description

The first detailed and comprehensive historical assessment of South Asian psychiatry in the twentieth century, breaking new ground on questions of globalisation and medicine in colonial India.

This book focuses on the Ranchi Indian Mental Hospital, the largest public psychiatric facility in colonial India during the 1920s and 1930s. It breaks new ground by offering unique material for a critical engagement with the phenomenon of the ‘indigenisation’ or ‘Indianisation’ of the colonial medical services and the significance of international professional networks. The work also provides a detailed assessment of the role of gender and race in this field, and of Western and culturally specific medical treatments and diagnoses. The volume offers an unprecedented look at both the local and global factors that had a strong bearing on hospital management and psychiatric treatment at this institution.

Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Tables and Figures; Introduction; Chapter 1: Indianisation and its Discontents; Chapter 2: The Patients: The Demographics of Gender and Age, Locality, Occupation, Caste and Religion; Chapter 3: Institutional Trends and Standardisation: Deaths, Diseases and Cures; Chapter 4: Classifications, Types of Disorder and Aetiology; Chapter 5: Treatments; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index 

Sujets

• History of Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780857280800
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Colonialism and Transnational PsychiatryADVANCE REVIEWS
‘As a solidly researched corrective to the psychoanalytic bias of many histories of
psychiatry in colonial India, this book represents an invaluable contribution toward the
institutional grounding of transcultural psychiatric historiography.’
—Eric J. Engstrom, Humboldt University of Berlin
‘Ernst has shown that decolonisation and globalisation of psychiatry in India went
almost hand in hand, creating practices which were both nationalistic and internationally
standardised.’
—Akihito Suzuki, Keio University
‘An in-depth account wherein individual and institutional histories coalesce, a work of
honest scholarship which will be useful by medical historians, sociologists and lay readers
alike.’
—Deepak Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University
‘A very important and original contribution to the growing literature on psychiatry and
colonialism, notable for its tight focus on a single mental hospital for Indians rather than
the imperial ruling class.’
—Andrew Scull, University of California, San Diego
‘In Colonialism and Transnational Psychiatry Waltraud Ernst makes an exceptionally valuable
contribution to our understanding of colonial medicine. Beyond providing a critical
perspective on the practice of psychiatry in early twentieth-century India, and the many
tensions and contradiction refected in the Indianisation of a colonial mental hospital, this
book breaks new ground by providing a deep, nuanced and rich analysis of transnational
psychiatry. In other words, Ernst insightfully contextualizes the problem of mental health
in India in terms that relate to, but are not limited by, the power structures of empire
or the postcolonial priorities of area-specifc studies. She paints a fascinating picture
of a mental hospital in India where doctors and patients struggle with the problems
and paradoxes of modernity during an era of dramatic political change and medical
innovation on a global scale.’
—Joseph Alter, Pittsburgh UniversityColonialism and Transnational
Psychiatry
The Development of an Indian
Mental Hospital in British India,
c. 1925–1940
WAl TRAuD ERNSTAnthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition frst published in uK and uSA 2013
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, london SE1 8HA, uK
or PO Box 9779, london SW19 7ZG, uK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, uSA
Copyright © Waltraud Ernst 2013
The author asserts the moral right to be identifed as the author of this work.
Cover images courtesy of the Digital South Asia library, http://dsal.uchicago.edu.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ernst, Waltraud, 1955– author.
Colonialism and transnational psychiatry : the development of an
Indian mental hospital in British India, c. 1925–1940 / Waltraud
Ernst.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-85728-019-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-85728-019-8 (hardcov
1. Psychiatry–India–History–20th century. 2. Psychiatric
hospitals–India–History–20th century. 3. Psychoanalysis and
colonialism–India. 4. Psychoanalysis and
racism–India–History. 5. Medical policy–Great
Britain. I. Title.
RC451.I6E76 2013
362.2’10954–dc23
2013032094
ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 019 0 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 0 85728 019 8 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an ebook.CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Tables and Figures xiii
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1 Indianisation and its Discontents 1
Towards Indianisation 3
Structural Inequities 5
Medical Politics and European Racial Prejudice 6
The Medical Market and Indian Competition 8
Professional Discrimination 8
Professional Closure and the Pathologisation
of a Successful Community 11
The Decline of the ‘Good Parsi’ 15
Collaborators, Competitors and Ambivalence 17
Indianisation and Histories of Medicine 20
Subalterns 21
Chapter 2The Patients: The Demographics of Gender
and Age, Locality, Occupation, Caste and Religion 27
Gender Confned 29
‘Chronic patients’ and long-term confnement 30
‘Private’ and ‘public’ patients 33
‘Criminal lunatics’ 35
Political prisoners 38
Petty crimes and the criminalisation of the mentally ill 39
Intellectual Disability and Patients’ Ages 41
Occupational Background and Caste 45
Religion 55vi COl ONIAlISM AND TRANSNATIONAl PSYCHIATRY
Chapter 3 Institutional Trends and Standardisation: Deaths,
Diseases and Cures 67
Mortality 68
Death and Illness by Gender 69
Causes of Death74
Towards Standardisation 76
Mortality and Morbidity 78
Disease Prevalence 81
Infuenza and malaria 81
Airborne diseases 84
Waterborne and parasitic diseases 87
General paralysis of the insane (GPI) and syphilis 91
Accidents and Injuries 91
Suicide, Escapes and Patients’ Freedom of Movement 94
Cures 99
Chapter 4 Classifcations, Types of Disorder and Aetiology 105
Standardisation and Variation of Classifcations 106
Ruptures and Continuities 108
‘On the omnibus’: Dementia praecox and schizophrenia 111
Identifying mania 112
Framing melancholia and circular/manic depressive insanity 114
Delusional insanity – paranoia 120
Dementia, delirium and confusion 122
From idiocy and imbecility to mental defciency 126
A culture-specifc syndrome: Cannabis insanity 128
General paralysis of the insane (GPI): A Western culture-bound condition 137
Male and Female Maladies? 141
Confusional insanity and female reproduction-related disorders 142
Cannabis and alcohol insanity 143
Epilepsy 145
Male melancholia – female mania and schizophrenia 149
Institutions compared: Longitudinal trends in gendered diagnoses 155
Aetiology – ‘the outstanding problem of psychiatry’ 159
Chapter 5 Treatments 173
Indigenous Herbs 174
‘Modern’ Drugs 178
Wonder Cures 180
The Shock Therapies 182
Sulfosin therapy 182
Insulin coma and Cardiazol shock therapy 183 CONTENTS vii
Malaria shock therapy 185
Justifying the Need to Shock and Sedate 186
Psychoanalysis 188
Western and Indian Tubs: Hydrotherapy 189
Dutt’s Bratachari191
Feasts and Religious Therapy 192
Work and Occupational Therapy – ‘useful both
to the patients as well as to the State’ 193
Diet – ‘one of the most important methods of mental treatment’ 197
Sports and Entertainment – ‘helps enormously towards
socialisation and rehabilitation of patients’ 199
Conclusion 205
Notes 209
Bibliography 247
Index 259ACKNOWlEDGEMENTS
My sincere thanks to Dr Subhash Gupta of Peninsula Medical School, Teignmouth
and Dr Veenu Pant of Jaipur for having kindly put me in touch with staff at Ranchi
Institute of Neuro-Psychiatry and Allied Sciences (RINPAS, the former Ranchi Indian
Mental Hospital at the centre of my analysis) and the Central Institute of Psychiatry at
Ranchi (CIP, formerly Ranchi European Mental Hospital). Their help in opening doors
at supposedly ‘closed institutions’ has been invaluable. Professor S. Haque Nizamie of
CIP and Professor Amool R. Singh of RINPAS enabled me to pursue my research on
location. Mr J. Kumar and Mrs T. K. Prasad assisted with archival queries at CIP and
RINPAS respectively. Many thanks to all of them for their support.
I am also grateful for the opportunities I was offered to give talks during 2009 on
some aspects covered in this book. I greatly benefted from the comments and criticisms
of colleagues from different academic disciplines. Particular thanks are due to staff at
RINPAS; the Department of History at Delhi university; the Nehru Memorial Museum
and library, New Delhi; the Indian Council for Historical Research, New Delhi; the
Department of Social Sciences at the university of Calicut; and the Centre for Studies
in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
I believe my study to be interdisciplinary and frmly imbedded within the paradigm
of the social history of medicine. Reference to existing work in the felds of history
of South Asia, transnational studies, medical anthropology, medical demography and
European medical history has been vital. Guidance by and collaboration with colleagues
of varied academic backgrounds was therefore highly appreciated. I would like to thank
Professor Biswamoy Pati (History, Delhi university), Assistant Professor Projit Bihari
Mukharji (History and Sociology of Science, university of Pennsylvania), Dr Saurabh
Mishra (History, university of Sheffeld) and Dr Samiksha Sehrawat (History, Newcastle
university) for their challenging comments and patient guidance on aspects of social,
cultural and economic Indian history.
Professors Debasish Basu and Ajit Avasthi (Department of Psychiatry, Postgraduate
Institute of