1,720,997 research outputs found
I See You: A Photo Album of People with Intellectual Disability
Full text linkThe casebook for the Institute for Imbecile Children, and the casebooks of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum constitutes one of South Africa’s largest archived records for people with intellectual disability (PWID) who were institutionalised from 1890 to 1920. In I See You I testify how the viewing of the casebooks’ content and photographs gave rise to a personal recognition of the personhood of the PWID. My testimony takes the form of poetry that is composed to honour and memorialise each individual person who is included in this album.
Rory du Plessis is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Studies at the School of the Arts, University of Pretoria. He is a NRF-rated scholar, the co-editor of the academic journal, Image & Text, and author of Pathways of Patients at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890 to 1907 (Pretoria University Law Press 2020)
Engendered Representations: Exploring Sexuality through Symbols and Myths
Full text linkThis article reflects the findings of a project that was conducted by the Institute for Women�s and Gender Studies at the University of Pretoria. In particular, the project sought to dialogue with religious and cultural leaders on the taboos, myths and misconceptions of human sexuality.The article provides an analysis of the symbols and myths of sexuality that were presented by these leaders.These symbols and myths were demystif ed to reveal their alignment to patriarchal gender divisions and inequality.This alignment proves problematic for women, as it views men as possessors of their bodies � insofar as women�s bodies are conceived as the vessels for men�s body fluids and the container of the foetus.</p
Automaton(tik): In Remembrance of the Patients of the Fort England Psychiatric Hospital
No full textIn 2025, the Fort England Psychiatric Hospital will celebrate its 150th anniversary. This milestone marks the Hospital as the oldest South African psychiatric facility that is still in use today. To help us remember the patients, I composed poems for 25 individuals who were institutionalised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 25 individuals form part of a larger set of 200 patients whose case files were recently discovered in one of the Hospital’s cabinets and are now in the custody of the Cory Library, Rhodes University. All the case files pertain to white male patients who were suffering from chronic mental illness and who remained institutionalised until their passing. In investigating the case files, I discerned that as the men grew older and their health deteriorated, the doctors’ reporting declared them to be ‘mentally dead’. At the time of their passing, the case files stripped the men’s existence of any value and laid them to an undignified rest with words detailing their infirmity, illness, idleness and incoherence. To restore the humanity of the men, as well as to memorialise their lives, I investigated their case files to find fragments of information that aid us in appreciating their individuality: their connections with family and friends; their leisure and vocational interests; and their personality and agency. I used these fragments as inspiration for writing my poems. Thus, while the fragments are a historical fact, I embedded them into a larger fictional narrative that captures my imagined impressions of each individual
Book Review: Pathology and visual culture: The scientific artworks of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot and the Salpêtrière School
No full textIn art historical investigations of Dr Jean-Martin Charcot and his work at the Salpêtrière, the focus has largely been on the representation of hysteria. Seminal texts have pioneered investigations in this field, and many students in art history are as acquainted with the key debates of photography and hysteria as they are with studying the Old Masters. Natasha Ruiz-Gómez’s book breaks new ground by turning much of her attention away from the representation of hysteria, to explore the ‘pathological drawings, photographs, casts, and sculptures’ (4) of neurological diseases that the clinicians and artists of the Salpêtrière created. Pathology and Visual Culture offers a case study of how these scientific artworks ‘combined scientific knowledge and artistic expression’ (4). Ruiz-Gómez presents a commendable study, situated within the fields of art history and visual culture, on how the scientific artworks trouble the binary between science and art, objectivity and aesthetic, and forwards an interpretation of the artworks that considers how the clinician and/or artist negotiated an interest in pursuing both ‘medical objectivity and artistry’ (5)
Impossible mourning: HIV/AIDS and visuality after apartheid
Full text linkIn her book, Impossible mourning, Kylie Thomas argues that although HIV/AIDS has been established as a central public discourse in South Africa during the last decade, the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS remain largely invisible. Moreover, the manifold losses, sorrows and deaths owing to AIDS are publicly unmourned. For Thomas (2014:9), the failure to mourn the ‘1,000 people who die of AIDS in South Africa each day’ testifies to the fact that their lives were ‘as invisible within public memory as their deaths’
Constructing patient-psychiatrist relations in psychiatric hospitals : the role of space and personal action
Full text linkThis essay investigates the role of space and personal action in the construction of patient–psychiatrist relations at psychiatric hospitals. In order to explore such a theme, the writings of R.D. Laing prove to be salutary. This is namely accredited to Laing's tenet that the staff and patients of a psychiatric hospital are institutionalised by both physical structures and personal action. A central approach taken in this essay is to explore Laing's theory through an inter-textual reading of Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization (1967) and Erving Goffman's Asylums (1961).http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csos20hb2013ay201
SOCIAL CLASS AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: A CRITICAL READING OF THOMAS SZASZ’S THE ETHICS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Full text linkThis paper aims to offer a critical reading of Thomas S. Szasz’s The ethics of psychoanalysis: The theory and method of autonomous psychotherapy (1965 / 1988a). In particular, the critical reading is focused on revealing and investigating the presence of attitudinal biases and beliefs pertaining to the social class of psychotherapy. It will be argued that in Szasz forwarding his thesis, a number of statements regarding social class are raised. In particular, and for the purposes of this paper, the key focus will be an investigation of Szasz’s proclamation that the poor and uneducated do not need psychoanalysis but require freedom, knowledge and skills. The paper will argue that this statement may not necessarily be presenting an attitudinal bias or belief against the poor and uneducated. Rather, Szasz is professing the nature and limitations of psychotherapy. Nonetheless, Szasz’s text still reflects attitudinal biases through the disapproval of the efforts made by Sigmund Freud to make psychotherapy available to all people
MALE PATIENTS COMMUNICATING RESTORED MENTAL HEALTH BY THEIR FACIAL EXPRESSIONS AND GENTLEMANLY PERSONA AT THE GRAHAMSTOWN LUNATIC ASYLUM, 1890–1907
Full text linkDuring the medical superintendence of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, from 1890 to 1907, he was watchful of his patients’ appearances, facial expressions and conduct. Of particular interest, Greenlees would closely monitor the patients’ faces to identify if there were any involuntary expressions that were indicators of underlying emotional unease or mental distress. Greenlees thus regarded involuntary facial expressions as a litmus test of a patient’s recovery, but it was the patient’s conscious facial expressions, as well as their presentation of upstanding behaviour and conduct, that signalled to the staff that they were self-composed, and hence on the path towards convalescence. In this article, I explore how three white male patients of the Asylum communicated their convalescence and/or restored mental health to the staff by posing for their casebook photographs and by presenting a gentlemanly persona. To this end, I interpret the photographs of the three men alongside entries from their casebooks as an interface to explore dimensions of time that lie outside the split second that was captured by the camera lens. In doing so, the glimpses of a patient’s agency and appearance in a photograph can be understood and compared with their performance of a gentlemanly persona that was recorded in the casebooks
The principles and priorities of Dr T.D. Greenlees, medical superintendent of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890-1907
Full text linkBy exploring the significant role played by the medical superintendents of lunatic asylums, there is a possibility of enriching our understanding and appreciation of the varieties of asylum culture. Said differently, by investigating the tenure of a superintendent, it is possible to highlight how the individual constructed an asylum to embody a set of goals and principles. Along these lines, the study aims to explore and investigate the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, under the medical superintendence of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees from 1890 to 1907. In order to explore Greenlees\u27s priorities and primary topics, the asylum\u27s annual reports provide a valuable resource. From the close examination of the annual reports several key topics emerge. The examination of the topics is informed by recent scholarship on moral therapy and Michel Foucault\u27s analysis of power.
Die bestudering van die beduidende rol wat mediese superintendente speel in sielsiekegestige kan ons begrip van en waardering vir die verskillende vorms van inrigtingkultuur verryk. Deur die ampstermyn van \u27n superintendent te ondersoek, kan vasgestel word hoe dié persoon \u27n inrigting opbou om \u27n stel oogmerke en beginsels te beliggaam. Op hierdie grondslag beoog die studie \u27n verkenning van en ondersoek na die Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum onder dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees as mediese superintendent van 1890 tot 1907. Die inrigting se jaarverslae bied \u27n waardevolle bron vir die verkenning van Greenlees se prioriteite en primêre onderwerpe. By nadere ondersoek van die jaarverslae kom verskeie belangrike onderwerpe na vore. Die bestudering van hierdie onderwerpe geskied aan die hand van onlangse navorsing oor morele terapie en Michel Foucault se ontleding van mag
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