Psychiatry and Chinese History (Studies for the Society for the Social History of Medicine)

This collection examines psychiatric medicine in China across the early modern and modern periods. Essays focus on the diagnosis, treatment and cultural implications of madness and mental illness and explore the complex trajectory of the medicalization of the mind in shifting political contexts of Chinese history. Historicizing Chinese Psychiatry / Howard Chiang -- Exorcising Dreams And Nightmares In Late Ming China / Brigid E. Vance -- Emotional Therapy And Talking Cures In Late Imperial China / Hsiu-fen Chen -- Medicaments And Persuasion : Medical Therapies For Madness In Nineteenth-century China / Fabien Simonis -- Psychiatric Space And Design Antecedents : The John G. Kerr Refuge For The Insane / Peter Szto -- An Iron Cage Of Civilization? Missionary Psychiatry, The Chinese Family And A Colonial Dialect Of Enlightenment / Zhiying Ma -- Tropical Neurasthenia Or Oriental Nerves? White Breakdowns In China / Wen-ji Wang -- Pathologizing Marriage : Neuropsychiatry And The Escape Of Women In Early Twentieth-century China / Hugh Shapiro -- Gone With The West Wind : The Emergence And Disappearance Of Psychotherapeutic Culture In China, 1936-68 / Geoffrey Blowers And Shelley Wang Xuelai -- A Charted Epidemic Of Trauma : Case Notes At The Psychiatric Department Of National Taiwan University Hospital Between 1946 And 1953 / Harry Yi-jui Wu -- The Emergence Of The Psycho-boom In Contemporary Urban China / Hsuan-ying Huang -- Reframing Psychiatry In China / Nancy N. Chen. Edited By Howard Chiang. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Contents 8 List of Contributors 10 List of Figures and Tables 14 Introduction 16 Part I: Historical Precedents 32 1. Exorcising Dreams and Nightmares in Late Ming China 32 2. Emotional Therapy and Talking Cures in Late Imperial China 52 3. Medicaments and Persuasion 70 Part II: Missionary Investments 86 4. Psychiatric Space and Design Antecedents 86 5. An Iron Cage of Civilization? 106 6. Tropical Neurasthenia or Oriental Nerves? 126 Part III: Biomedical Modernity 144 7. Pathologizing Marriage 144 8. Gone with the West Wind 158 9. A Charted Epidemic of Trauma 176 Part IV: New Therapeutic Cultures 198 10. The Emergence of the Psycho-Boom in Contemporary Urban China 198 11. Afterword 220 Notes 228 Index 276