Research on the history of psychiatry *

Availability

At institutions which have purchased the ProQuest databases, abstracts of most of the dissertations can be downloaded, and many entire texts can also be downloaded free of charge.

A printed version of a dissertation can be purchased from ProQuest Company, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI481 06-1346, USA (tel. 800-5210600). Current prices for University Affiliated Persons: unbound $39.00, soft $54.00, hard $70.00, PDF (when available) $37.00, microfilm $46.00, microfiche $51.00.

Jonathon Erlen ^** has provided the following annotated list of dissertations relevant to our field, based on his review of Dissertation Abstracts (2011). Entries are in alphabetical order of author; each entry gives title, author, year, doctorate, institution, number of pages (if known) and unique identifier/order number. Note that in titles, no accents are used in Dissertation Abstracts.

Careers of professional psychologists: A comparison of the career experiences of the graduates of the clinical Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs at Rutgers University.

Biondo, Kara Mia, PsyD, 2010, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, NJ, 134 pp., 3427768.

This study compares the career experiences of graduates from the Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs at Rutgers University. The following dimensions were compared: demographic information; educational history; professional activities; work as a practicing clinician; memberships in professional organizations; theoretical orientation and view of self as a psychologist; career satisfaction; attitudes towards training; and acceptance of the Psy.D. degree among Psy.D. degree holders. The author concludes that future research is needed to address the questions raised by the findings of this study, although many of the other results can immediately be used to improve the field of professional psychology.

Winnicott’s transformational metaphors: A cognitive-linguistic analysis.

Casali, Michael A, PhD, 2010, Institute for Clinical Social Work (Chicago), IL, 341 pp., 3423939.

Donald Woods Winnicott, April 7, 1896 to January 29, 1971, was an English pediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially important in the field of object relations theory. His paper The Use of an Object was positioned historically among extant theoretical models and employed to investigate the semantic evolution of key Winnicottian concepts. Biographical accounts reveal core developmental themes which elucidate the conceptual foundations of Winnicott’s ontology and offer alternatives ways to understand the nature and function of his ideas. Overall the findings were congruent with the epistemological stance of experientialism.

An integration of the existential understanding of anxiety in the writings of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, and Kirk Schneider.

De Castro, Alberto, PhD, 2010, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, CA, 150 pp., 3423854.

This theoretical study is based on the existential humanistic theories of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, and Kirk Schneider. The final goal of this research is to develop an integrated and organized way of understanding the existential foundations of anxiety and dysfunctional personal experiences. The author clarifies the development of anxiety from the contact and confrontation with six existential dilemmas and their role in the development of health and dysfunctional personal experiences.

An analysis of the relationships among trauma, posttraumatic stress, health risk behaviors and physical health using the National Comorbidity Survey Replication data.

Del Gaizo, Ariel Lynn, PhD, 2010, University of South Dakota, SD, 94 pp., 3429604.

Most research has found that PTSD mediates the relationship between traumatic event exposure and physical health. However, it is unclear if there is an indirect/mediational relationship between traumatic event exposure and health risk behaviors through PTSD. This study uses archival data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication which was conducted between February 2001 and April 2003. There were mixed findings with regards to engaging in health risk behaviors involving substance abuse as a mediator of the relationship between PTSD diagnosis and poor physical health. The results provide little support for engagement of health risk behaviors as a mediator.

Imaginative beholding: Physiological psychology and the discourse on representation in fin-de-siecle Germany.

Winifred Elysse, PhD, 2010, Harvard University, MA, 314 pp., 3435304.

The subject of this dissertation is to demonstrate that the modernist understanding of representation was not solely a rupture with the past but emerged from a productive exchange of concepts between the arts and sciences in the late nineteenth century from the discipline of psychology. The author contends that without the new models of mind emerging in German physiological psychology in the thirty year period 1860s-1890s the concept of representation in aesthetics would not have escaped the boundaries of classical mimesis and fostered the necessary conditions for the production and reception of modernity in aesthetics and by extension, art.

Mental health and ideals of citizenship: Patient care at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., 1903–1962.

Gambino, Matthew Joseph, PhD, 2010 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, 368 pp., 3455666.

The author argues that U.S. psychiatry’s cultural project in the first half of the twentieth century was the reconstitution of mentally-distressed men and women for proper citizenship. This enterprise is visible on the wards, in the consulting rooms, and in the outpatient clinics of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., one of the most widely-respected institutions of the era. Through an intensive analysis of patient care at St. Elizabeths, this study identifies two fundamental tensions in psychiatry’s cultural project. First, while physicians maintained high therapeutic aspirations for their patients, many of the men and women at the hospital received little more than custodial care. Second, despite the concept of citizenship’s egalitarian overtones, physicians at St. Elizabeths promoted a highly gendered and racialized vision of American life.

Natsalie Rogers: An experiential psychology of self-realization beyond Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers.

Herron, Sue Ann, PhD, 2010, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, CA, 236 pp., 3428084.

This study is a historical and biographical study of the psychotherapist Natalie Rogers, her work in person-centered expressive arts therapy, and her place in psychology. Pivotal life events from 1956-1996 are explored: her early married life and ensuing crisis in her marriage, Abraham Maslow’s early influence on her life choices, her Masters work at Brandeis, her early feminist influences, the workshops on the person-centered approach with her father, Carl Rogers and her changing relationship with him, and the development of her unique approach to person-centered expressive arts therapy. Historical and biographical research methods used for this work are anchored in the qualitative tradition of existential-humanistic and transpersonal psychology’s conception of a person-centered science.

Essays on the economics of mental health and social interactions.

Lang, Matthew Daniel, PhD, 2010, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 140 pp., 3422475.

The author investigates questions on mental health, suicide and social networks. In the 1990s and early 2000s a number of states passed laws requiring mental health benefits to be included in health insurance coverage. The variation in the strength and enactment dates of these laws provides an opportunity to measure the impact of increasing access to mental health care on mental health outcomes, as evidenced by state suicide rates. Special focus is place on the relationship between guns and suicide, using firearm background checks as a proxy for gun ownership and identifying the effect of gun ownership on suicide rates.

Audience communities: Early modern desire in post-1956 British performance.

Middleton, Irene, PhD, 2010, Emory University, GA, 327 pp., 3423098.

Cognitive science supports the conclusion that audience members have more similarities than differences in their response to performance. On an unconscious cognitive level, audience members participate in the creation of meaning from performed actions and language. Cognitive science supports the conclusion that audience members have more similarities than differences in their response to performance. On an unconscious cognitive level, audience members participate in the creation of meaning from performed actions and language. Early modern drama, however, has a fruitful combination of the familiar and the alien, regularly producing moments that are identifiable as desires yet are evasive of modern sexual identity categories. These ‘queer desires’ lure all audience members into interpretive participation with the titillation of desire without threatening sexual self-identity. This study examines Titus Andronicus, which increases a longing for community, The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice, which increase a yearning for ethnic and religious tolerance, and As You Like It, which encourages support for patriarchal structures.

The music of the spheres: Music and the gendered mind in nineteenth-century Britain.

Peak, Anna, PhD, 2010, Temple University, PA, 266 pp., 3423248.

This interdisciplinary study examines how nineteenth-century British ideas about music reflected and influenced the period’s gendering of the mind. The author contributes to a fuller picture of nineteenth-century psychology by demonstrating that the mind began to be increasingly gendered in the early part of the century but was largely de-gendered by century’s end. Analyzing a range of literary texts, both canonical and non-canonical, in this context demonstrates that music was portrayed increasingly negatively over the century as it became harder and harder to contain the increasing threat that music posed to traditional gender norms, a threat based in a view of music that began to imply mental equality between men and women. This implication was embraced by some, particularly homosexuals, and feared by others, who tried to rescue traditional norms by displacing gender ambiguity onto foreigners and Jews.

Thinking differently: Psychiatry, literature and dissent in the late Soviet period.

Reich, Rebecca, PhD, 2010, Harvard University, MA, 305 pp., 3435478.

This work examines psychiatric and literary conceptions of insanity in the Soviet Union from the 1950s to the 1980s. This period stands out not only for the development of a self-identified subculture of ‘thinking differently’, as the Russian word for ‘dissent’ [inakomyslie ] may be literally translated, but also for an emphasis in unsanctioned literature on clinical representations of mental illness and a growing awareness of the state’s use of psychiatric hospitalization to suppress dissenting or nonconformist views. The author uses four case studies to prove her contentions: Aleksandr Vol’pin, a mathematician, poet and human rights activist, the prose writer and critic Andrei Siniayskii, Venedikt Erofeev who made the ‘mask’ of madness central to his work, and the poet Joseph Brodsky. All four were ‘hospitalized’ by the state for their dissident scholarship during this time frame.

Word of myth: Critical stories in minority American literature.

Schiff, Sarah Eden, PhD, 2010, Emory University, GA, 426 pp., 3423116.

Since the 1960s, African American, Native American, Asian American, and Chicano/a literatures have captivated the national imagination. This study contends that minority authors’ pervasive use of myth has been foundational to this boom in literary production. To map the ways cross cultural US literatures deploy myth, the author draws on a broad spectrum of myth theory, from mid-century structuralists Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade to more recent scholars of religion and philosophy such as Paul Ricoeur and Wendy Doniger.

Mad narratives: Exploring self-constitutions through the diagnostic looking glass.

Tekin, Serife, PhD, 2010, York University, CA, 288 pp., NR68579.

This study introduces a novel approach to the philosophical conceptions of the self and to the bioethical underpinnings of psychiatry through an investigation of the ontological and ethical implications of psychiatric diagnoses on personal identity. Through an analysis of memoirs written by psychiatric patients who received a psychiatric diagnosis based on the criteria provided by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and an investigation of the criticisms that challenge contemporary psychiatry, it is suggested that there are grounds to believe that sometimes DSM-based narratives constrain the diagnosed subject’s flourishing, reduce subjects’ sense of agency, and restrict their autonomy. However, there are also grounds for believing that sometimes DSM-based narratives contribute to patients flourishing. This conclusion draws attention to the problems in the theory and practice of psychiatry and highlights the need to focus on diagnosed subjects’ experiences with their mental disorder and psychiatric treatment. The author shows that philosophical analysis is indispensable in research on the ethics of mental health.

“Gasping for breath”: The language of Chora in the poetics and narrative praxis of Emerson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Dickinson.

Valin, Joanne, 2010, PhD, University of Manitoba, Canada, 387 pp. NR64300.

The author presents a psychoanalytic, feminist and semiotic re-reading of poetics and narrative strategy in Emerson’s prose essays, Poe’s gothic short stories, Hawthorne’s romance novels, Melville’s most debated novella and a selection of Dickinson’s hand-written poetry. This study seeks to generate new points of intersection with these texts and their meeting with literary history, the history of popular and medical science in America, genetic analysis and textual studies. Special attention is paid to the discourse of Chora, both by analyzing the language of metaphor and metonymy, sonic and semiotic play, and by gesturing towards an interpretive language that engages with and explores this problem stylistically.

Drawing the straight line: Social movements and hierarchies of evidence in sexual reorientation therapy debates.

Waidzunas, Thomas John, PhD, 2010, University of California, San Diego, CA, 519 pp., 3426074.

This work examines the construction of scientific knowledge about ‘sexual orientation’, as it has emerged within debates over reorientation therapies in the United States from the 1950s to the present. Drawing on science studies, sexuality studies, and sociology of social movements, and building on an approach developed by Steven Epstein, the author studies how the credibility of different forms of evidence has been shaped by professionals seeking jurisdiction over therapy clients, the dynamics of opposing social movements, and the historical context. Following the removal of ‘homosexuality’ from the DSM, reorientation proponents have attempted to reinstate their authority using various tactics. Significantly, psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, known for his key role in demedicalizing the concept of homosexuality, conducted research purportedly demonstrating that some gay men and lesbians can become heterosexual through reorientation.

Defining human: Species, sanity, and legal subjecthood.

Weller, Kris, 2010, PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz, 249 pp. 3421244.

This study explores the characteristics of the figure of the human in US law through an analysis of locations where humans with mental difference and non-human animals are discussed together. These locations include a court decision that consolidated a case concerning zoo animals with another concerning humans recently discharged from mental hospitals. Examining the discourses surrounding these locations in light of US legal history, the author concludes that the status of being a member of a group that is or has been legally captive compromises one’s present and future claims to full legal personhood.

Pride in Freud and Augustine: Psychotherapy as an art of grace

Yates, Mark Christopher, PhD, 2010, Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Psychology, CA, 182 pp., 3436298.

Integration of psychology and theology at the level of world-views can fail to deal with suffering when they do not take into account unconscious pride. This work discusses Freud’s use of the Oedipus myth and Augustine’s use of the myth of the Fall in order to situate the psychotherapeutic relationship in a dialogue about pride, which relates to the distortion of love. The author suggests that psychotherapy can be an art of grace that facilitates the healing of pride and helps people to love in two ways: acknowledging unconscious pride, and faith as an essential quality that helps to deal with pride.