A Psychiatric Milestone: Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921
History
A Psychiatric Milestone: Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921
Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane; Mental illness
Among the most interesting formulations and potential contributions of
psychiatry are those reaching out toward jurisprudence. Psychiatry deals
pre-eminently with the variety and differences of human personalities.
To correct or supplement a human system apparently enslaved by concern
about precedent and baffling rules of evidence inherited from the days
of cruel and arbitrary kings, the demand for justice has called for
certain remedies. Psychiatry still plays a disgraceful role in the
so-called expert testimony, largely a prostitution of medical authority
in the service of legal methods. Yet, out of it all there has arisen the
great usefulness of the psychiatrist in the juvenile and other courts.
There it is shown that if psychiatry is to help, it should be taken for
granted that the person indicted on a charge should thereby become
subject to a complete and unreserved study of all the facts, subject to
cross-examination, to be sure, but before all accessible to complete and
unreserved study. This would mean a substantial participation of law in
the promotion of knowledge of facts and constructive activity, and a
conception of indeterminate sentence not merely in the service of
leniency but in the service of the best protection of the public, and,
if necessary, lasting detention of those who cannot be reformed, before
they have had to do their worst. Whoever is clearly indicted for
breaking the laws of social compatibility should not merely invite a
spirit of revenge, but should, through the indictment, surrender
automatically to legalized authority endowed with the right and duty of
an unlimited investigation of the facts as they are.
Looking back then, you can see how the history of the human thought
about what we call mind and psyche displayed some strange reactions of
the practical man, the scientist, the philosopher, and theologian toward
one of the most important and practical problems. It is difficult to
realize what it means to arrive at ever-more-workable formulations and
methods of approach. We do not have to be mind-shy _or_ body-shy any
longer. To-day we can attack the facts as we find them, without that
disturbing obsession of having to translate them first into something
artificial before we can really study them and work with them. Since we
have reached a sane pluralism with a justifiable conviction of the
fundamental consistency of it all, a satisfaction with what we modestly
call formulation rather than definition and with an appreciation of
relativity, we have at last an orderly and natural field and method from
which nobody need shy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account