Psychological Subjects:
Identity, Health and Culture in 20th-Century Britain
MA Module, Department of History, University of
Warwick
Spring Term, 2012, Wednesday 10-12
Venue: Humanities Building, Room 310
Module Director: Mathew Thomson
Contact: M.Thomson@warwick.ac.uk
Module Description
This module explores the popularisation and influences of
psychology in twentieth-century Britain. It is particularly
suited to students on the MAs in Modern British History
and the History of Medicine, though students from other
MAs are equally welcome. It draws in particular on
themes developed in my Psychological Subjects (2006). The
module begins with a focus on the popularisation of
psychology and psychoanalysis at the start of the century,
inviting reflection on continuities with Victorian
phenomena such as Mesmerism, Phrenology, and
Spiritualism, and questioning the centrality of Freud and
psychoanalysis in traditional accounts. It then turns to the
emergence of the discipline and profession of psychology
at the turn of the century, to the influence of psychology
within education, industry, and healthcare, and to the role
of psychology in relation to war and politics. Finally it
concludes with the subject of psychology and sex, and the
role of psychology and a culture of therapy in the
emergence of what some have called a culture of
narcissism in the last decades of the century. Each week,
in addition to taking advantage of an increasingly rich
secondary literature, students will be encouraged to
examine readily available primary sources. Then in the
final week, students will present original findings arising
from these sources. This will be a useful opportunity for
further developing ideas towards the required 5,000 word
essay.
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Schedule of Meetings
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Popular Psychology and Psychoanalysis:
Victorian to Modern Subjects?
Week 3: Education
Week 4: Industry/Consumption/Class
Week 5: Healthcare
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: War
Week 8: Psychology, Sex, and the Permissive Society
Week 9: From Psychological Subjects to the Therapeutic
Society (and Beyond: to the Rise of the Neurochemical
Subject?)
Week 10: Workshop
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Seminars and Reading Suggestions
Each week, students should read material marked * and also come ready to
discuss an example drawn from the primary material. They are also
encouraged to dip into the further reading.
Week 1: Introduction
This seminar provides an opportunity for students to reflect on the question
posed by Roger Smith: ‘Of what is history of psychology a subject?’ It also
provides an opportunity to reflect on the potential significance of a history of
psychology broadly conceived for understanding aspects of twentieth-century
British history. To what extent, as Nikolas Rose suggests, can this open up a
history of the ‘assembling of the modern self’. Finally, it acts as an
introductory meeting to discuss sources, aims, and expectations of the
module.
Bunn, G., Lovie, A. & Richards, G., Psychology in Britain: Historical Essays and
Personal Reflections (2001).
Danziger, Kurt, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological
Research (1990).
Hearnshaw, Leslie, A Short History of British Psychology, 1840-1940 (1964).
Kuklick, H., The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 18851945 (1991).
Pfister, J. and Schnog, N. (eds.), Inventing the Psychological: Toward a Cultural
History of Emotional Life in America (1997)
Richards, Graham, ‘Of What is History of Psychology a History?’ British
Journal of the History of Science, 20 (1987), 201-11.
Rose, Nikolas, The Psychological Complex: Psychology, Politics and Society in
England, 1869-1939 (1985), pp. 1-10.
* Smith, Roger, ‘Does the History of Psychology have a Subject?’, History of the
Human Sciences, 1 (1988), 147-77.
Soffer, Reba, Ethics and Society in England: The Revolution in the Social Sciences
1870-1914 (1978).
Thomson, ‘Reframing the Discipline’, Psychological Subjects, pp. 54-75.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘The Popular, the Practical, and the Professional:
Psychological Identities in Britain, 1901-1950’, in G. Bunn et al (eds.),
Psychology in Britain, pp. 115-32.
Identity/The Self/Emotions
Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late
Modern Age (1991).
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Hacking, Ian, ‘Making up People’, in T.C. Heller et al (eds.), Reconstructing
Individualism (1986).
Hacking, Ian, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory
(1995).
Roper, Michael, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The War Generation
and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914-1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44
(2005).
Roper, Michael, ‘Slipping out of View: Subjectivity and Emotion in Gender
History’, History Workshop Journal, 59 (2005).
* Rose, Nikolas, ‘Assembling the Modern Self’, in Roy Porter (ed.), Rewriting
the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (1997).
Rose, Nikolas, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood (1986)
Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989).
Wahrman, Dror, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in
Eighteenth-Century England (2004).
Week 2: Popular Psychology and Psychoanalysis: Victorian to Modern
Psychological Subjects?
This seminar concentrates on the early twentieth century, though it also
provides opportunity for consideration of earlier popular movements in the
nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on assessing the impact of Freud
and psychoanalysis on British culture in the first decades of the century, the
extent to which these ideas were accepted or resisted and the reasons for this.
Did these years see the breakdown of a Victorian model of the self and the
emergence of modern psychological subjects instead? To what extent does a
search via the online Times provide material to address these issues?
Cooter, Roger, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the
Organisation of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1984).
Dixon, Joy, Divine Feminine: Theosophy and Feminism in England (2001).
Falby, Alison. 'The modern confessional : Anglo-American religious groups
and the emergence of lay psychotherapy'. Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, 39:3 (2003), 251-67.
Forrester, John, ‘”A Whole Climate of Opinion”: Rewriting the History of
Psychoanalysis’, in M. Micale and R. Porter (eds.), Discovering the History of
Psychiatry (1994), pp. 174-90.
Hayward, Rhodri, ‘Demonology, Neurology and Medicine in Edwardian
Britain’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 78 (2004), 37-58.
Hazelgrove, J., Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars
Maddox, Brenda. Freud's wizard : the enigma of Ernest Jones. London: John
Murray, 2006.
5
Oppenheim, Janet, Shattered Nerves: Doctors, Patients and Depression in Victorian
England, 1850-1914 (1991).
Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychic Research in England,
1850-1914 (1985).
Owen, Alexander, The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late
Victorian England (1989).
Owen, Alexander, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and Culture of the
Modern (2004).
Owen, Alexander, ‘The Sorceror and his Apprentice: Aleister Crowley and the
Magical Exploration of Victorian Subjectivity’, Journal of British Studies, 36
(1997), 99-133.
* Rapp, Dean, ‘The Early Discovery of Freud by the British General Reading
Public, 1912-1919’, Social History of Medicine, 3 (1990), 217-45.
* Richards, Graham, ‘Britain on the Couch: The Popularization of
Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1918-1940’, Science in Context, 13 (2000), 183-230.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Practical Psychology’ in Psychological Subjects, pp. 17-53.
Thomson, ‘After the New Age’, in Psychological Subjects, 76-105.
Winter, Alison, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (1998)
Source: The Times (online search)
Week 3: Education and Childhood
This seminar focuses on the impact of psychology in education and in relation
to children, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. It calls for
consideration of the influence and rationale for mental testing, but also for the
role of new psychological ideas in the development of progressive education.
How far did these two approaches develop, what factors facilitated this, and
what factors held it back? In the process, in what senses was childhood
reshaped? Finally, can you find sources in the Modern Records Centre that
cast light on these processes, and in what ways do the writing and careers of
A.S. Neill and Susan Isaacs cast light on the subject?
Evans, B. and Waites B., IQ and Mental Testing: An Unnatural Science and its
Social History (1981).
Hall, Jody S. 'Psychology and schooling : the impact of Susan Isaacs and Jean
Piaget on 1960s science education reform'. History of Education, 29:2 (2000),
153-70.
Hardyment, Christina, Dream Babies: Child Care from Locke to Spock (1983).
Hearnshaw, Leslie, Cyril Burt: Psychologist (1979).
Hendrick, Harry, Child Welfare: England, 1872-1989 (1994).
6
Humphries, S., Hooligans or Rebels: An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood
and Youth, 1889-1939 (1981).
Joynson, R.B., The Burt Affair (1989).
Rose, Nikolas, The Psychological Complex (1985).
Steedman, Carolyn, Childhood, Culture and Class: Margaret McMillan, 1860-1931
(1990).
Steedman, Carolyn, ‘”The Mother Made Conscious”: The Historical
Development of a Primary School Pedagogy’, History Workshop Journal, 20
(1985), 149-63.
Steedman, Carolyn, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human
Interiority, 1780-1930 (1995).
Sutherland, Gillian, Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English
Education (1984).
Thom, Deborah, ‘The Healthy Citizen of Empire or Juvenile Delinquent?
Beating and Mental Health in the UK’, in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra & Hilary
Marland (eds.), Cultures of Child Health (2003) pp. 189-212.
Thom, Deborah, ‘Wishes, Anxieties, Play and Gestures’, in R. Cooter (ed.), In
the Name of the Child: Health and Welfare, 1880-1940 (1992), pp. 200-19.
Thom, Deborah, ‘The Healthy Citizen of Empire or Juvenile Delinquent?:
Beating and Mental Health in the UK’, in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra and Hilary
Marland (eds.), Cultures of Child Health in Britain and the Netherlands in the
Twentieth Century (2003), 189-212.
Thomson, ‘Psychology and Education’, Psychological Subjects, pp. 109-39.
Thomson, Mathew, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy, and
Social Policy in Britain, 1870-1959 (1998).
Urwin, Cathy, and Sharland, Elaine, ‘From Bodies to Minds in Childcare
Literature: Advice to Parents in Inter-War Britain’, in Cooter, In the Name of the
Child, 174-199.
Wooldridge, Adrian, Measuring the Mind: Education and Psychology in England,
1860-1990 (1994).
Sources: Modern Records Office (Educational Papers); writing of A.S. Neill
and Susan Isaacs (available in Library)
Week 4: Industry/Consumption/Class
This seminar considers the particular challenges of tackling the psychology of
work in the first half of the century. It asks students to reflect on the
motivations for what was called industrial psychology, the reasons for
resistance, and the tactics deployed in attempting to overcome this. It also
asks whether there is a history of psychology in relation to economic life in
this period that goes beyond the subject of industrial psychology. How, for
instance, could new psychological thought and practise be mobilised by
7
workers as well as employers, and in relation to consumption as well as
production. Finally, it asks students a) to reflect upon the use of a professional
journal (Journal of the National Institute for Industrial Psychology/Human
Factor/Occupational Psychology) as a source for understanding such issues; and
b) to retrieve one document from the Modern Records Centre casting light on
the discussion.
Cooter, Roger, ‘Malingering and Modernity’ in Roger Cooter, Steve Sturdy &
Mark Harrison (eds.), War, Medicine and Society (1999), pp. 125-48.
McIvor, Arthur, A History of Work in Britain, 1880-1950 (2001).
McKibbin, Ross, ‘The “Social Psychology” of Unemployment in Interwar
Britain’, in McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 18801950 (1991), pp. 228-58.
Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of
Modernity (1990).
Rose, Jonathan, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (2001).
Rose, Nikolas, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (1989), pp. 55118.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Psychology and the Problem of Industrial Civilisation’,
Psychological Subjects, pp. 140-72.
Winslow, T., ‘Keynes and Freud: Psychoanalysis and Keynes’s Account of the
“Animal Spirits of Modern Capitalism”’, Social Research, 53 (1986), 549-78.
Beales, H.L. and Lambert, R.S., Memoirs of the Unemployed (1934).
Sources: Journal of the National Institute for Industrial Psychology/Human
Factor/Occupational Psychology; Modern Records Centre.
Week 5: Healthcare
This seminar considers the challenges of a shift of interest from mental illness
and mental deficiency to mental health in the interwar period. Students
should reflect on the strategies available for addressing mental health within
medicine, the arguments advanced, and the obstacles encountered. They will
search the medical journal, The Lancet, for evidence on these issues.
Armstrong, David, The Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in
Britain in the Twentieth Century (1983), chapters 3 & 7.
Bartlett, Peter and Wright, David (eds.), Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The
History of Care in the Community 1750-2000 (1999)
Clark, Michael, ‘The Rejection of Psychological Approaches to Mental
Disorder in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Psychiatry’, in
8
Andrew Scull (ed.), Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of
Psychiatry in the Victorian Era (1981).
Davies, Kerry. '"A small corner that's for myself" : space, place and patients'
experiences of mental health care, 1948-98'. In Topp, Leslie Elizabeth, 1969-;
Moran, James E.; Andrews, Jonathan, 1961- (ed.), Madness, architecture and the
built environment : psychiatric spaces in historical context (Routledge studies in
the social history of medicine, 27) (New York; London: Routledge, 2007), 30520.
Davies, Kerry. '"Silent and censured travellers"? : patients' narratives and
patients' voices : perspectives on the history of mental illness since 1948'.
Social History of Medicine, 14:2 (2001), 267-92.
Davis, Gayle. The cruel madness of love : sex, syphilis and psychiatry in Scotland,
1880-1930 (Clio Medica, 85).
Evans, Bonnie; Rahman, Shahina; Jones, Edgar, 1953-. 'Managing the
"unmanageable" : interwar child psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital,
London'. History of Psychiatry, 19:4 (2008), 454-75.
Hayward, Rhodri. 'Desperate housewives and model amoebae : the invention
of suburban neurosis in inter-war Britain'. In Jackson, Mark (ed.), Health and
the modern home (Routledge studies in the social history of medicine, 31) (New
York: Routledge, 2007), 42-62.
Hayward, Rhodri. 'From Clever Hans to Michael Balint : emotion, influence
and the unconscious in British medical practice'. In Alberti, Fay Bound, 1971(ed.), Medicine, emotion and disease, 1700-1950 (Houndsmills; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 144-68.
Hendrick, Harry, ‘Children’s Emotional Well-Being and Mental Health in
Early Post-Second World War Britain: The Case of Unrestricted Hospital
Visiting’, in Hofstra and Marland (eds.), Cultures of Child Health, 213-42.
Jackson, Mark, The Borderline of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fabrication
of the Feeble Mind in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (2000).
Jones, Edgar, 1953-; Rahman, Shahina. 'Framing Mental Illness, 1923-1939 :
The Maudsley Hospital and its Patients'. Social History of Medicine, 21:1 (2008),
107-25.
Lawrence, Chris, ‘Still Incommunicable: Clinical Holists and Medical
Knowledge in Interwar Britain’, in C. Lawrence and G. Wisz (eds.), Greater
than their Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920-1950 (1998), 94-111.
Long, Vicky, ‘Changing Public Representations of Mental Illness in Britain,
1870-1970’ Ph.D. thesis (University of Warwick, 2004)
Pines, Malcolm, ‘The Development of the Psychodynamic Movement’, in
Berrios and Freeman (eds.), 150 Years of British Psychiatry Volume 1 (1991(,
206-31.
Michael, Pam, Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in North Wales, 1800-2000
(2000).
9
* Roy Porter, ‘Two Cheers for Psychiatry! The Social History of Mental
Disorder in Twentieth-Century Britain, in G. Berrios & H. Freeman (eds.), 150
Years of British Psychiatry: Volume 2 The Aftermath (1996), 383-406.
Rait, S., ‘Early British Psychoanalysis and the Medico-Psychological Clinic’,
History Workshop Journal, 58 (2004), 63-85.
Richards, Graham, ‘Psychology and the Churches in Britain, 1919-1939:
Symptoms of Conversion’, History of the Human Sciences, 13 (2000), 57-84.
Root, Sheryl, ‘Healing, Touch, and Medicine, c. 1890-1950’ Ph.D. thesis
(University of Warwick, 2006).
Rose, Nikolas, The Psychological Complex (1985).
Shorter, Edward, From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in
the Modern Era (1992).
Stewart, John, 1951 Dec. 3-. '"I thought you would want to come and see his
home": child guidance and psychiatric social work in inter-war Britain'. In
Jackson, Mark (ed.), Health and the modern home (Routledge studies in the
social history of medicine, 31) (New York: Routledge, 2007), 111-27.
Swanson, Gillian. 'Serenity, Self-regard and the Genetic Sequence : Social
Psychiatry and Preventive Eugenics in Britain, 1930s-1950s'. New Formations,
60 (2007), 50-65.
Thomson, Mathew, The Problem of Mental Deficiency: Eugenics, Democracy and
Social Policy in Britain, 1870-1959 (1998).
Thomson, ‘Medicine and the Psychological’, Psychological Subjects, pp. 173206.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Mental Hygiene as an International Movement’, in Paul
Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements, 1919-1939
(1995), pp. 283-304.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Neurasthenia in Britain’, in M. Gijswijt-Hofstra & Roy
Porter (eds.), Cultures of Neurasthenia: From Beard to the First World War (2001),
pp. 77-96.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Constituting Citizenship: Mental Deficiency, Mental
Health and Human Rights in Inter-War Britain’, in C. Lawrence & A. Mayer
(eds.), Regenerating England: Medicine and Culture in Inter-War Britain (2000),
pp. 231-50.
Toms, Jonathan, ‘Mental Hygiene to Civil Rights: MIND and the Problematic
of Personhood, c. 1900 to c. 1980’, (Ph.D. thesis: University of London, 2005).
Turner, Trevor, ‘James Crichton Browns and the Anti-Psycho-Analysts’, in
Berrios and Freeman (eds.), 150 Years of British Psychiatry, Volume 2 (1996),
144-55.
Westwood, Louise, ‘A Quiet Revolution in Brighton: Dr Helen Boyle’s
Pioneering Approach to Mental Health Care, 1899-1939’, Social History of
Medicine, 14 (2001), 439-57.
10
Westwood, Louise. 'Care in the Community of the Mentally Disordered : The
Case of the Guardianship Society, 1900-1939'. Social History of Medicine, 20:1
(2007), 57-72.
Sources: The Lancet (online).
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: War
The seminar will consider the influential view that the First World War was a
turning point for treatments of and attitudes towards mental illness in Britain.
We will view a film and discuss a short film, War Neuroses, made during the
First World War that depicts shell-shock. Secondly, the seminar turns our
attention to the role of psychology in the Second World War, particularly its
function in relation to thinking about the origins of the war, the management
of morale, and the building of a better post-war society. To address ideas
about the relationship between war, peace and human nature in this period,
students will read and compare extracts from Wilfred Trotter’s Instincts of the
Herd in Peace and War (1919) and Edward Glover’s War, Sadism and Pacifism
(1945).
Barham, Peter, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (2004).
Brooke, Stephen, ‘Evan Durbin: Reassessing a Labour “Revisionist”’,
Twentieth Century British History, 7 (1996).
Bourke, Joanna, ‘Psychology at War, 1914-1945’, in Bunn et al (eds.),
Psychology in Britain.
Leese, Peter, Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First
World War (2002).
Lerner, J.C. and Newcombe, N., ‘Britain between the Wars: The Historical
Context of Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment’, Psychiatry, 45 (1982), 1-12.
Leys, Ruth, Trauma: A Genealogy (2000).
* Loughran, Tracey. 'Shell-Shock and Psychological Medicine in First World
War Britain'. Social History of Medicine, 22:1 (2009), 79-95.
McLaine, Ian, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of
Information in World War II (1979).
Nuttall, Jeremy, ‘Psychological Socialist; Militant Moderate: Evan Durbin and
the Politics of Synthesis’, Labour History Review, 68 (2003), 235-52.
Riley, Denise, War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (1983).
Roper, Michael, ‘Between Manliness and Masculinity: The “War Generation”
and the Psychology of Fear in Britain, 1914-1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44
(2005), 343-62. Roper, Michael. 'Re-remembering the soldier hero : the psychic
11
and social construction of memory in personal narratives of the Great War'.
History Workshop Journal, 50 (2000), 181-204.
Rose, Nikolas, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (1989), pp. 1542.
Shephard, Ben, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914-1994 (2000).
* Stone, Martin, ‘Shellshock and the Psychologists’, in W. Bynum, R. Porter &
M. Shepherd (eds.), The Anatomy of Madness, Volume 2 (1985), pp. 242-71.
Sluga, Glenda, Nation, Psychology, and International Politics: 1870-1919.
Soffer, Reba, ‘The New Elitism: Social Psychology in Prewar England’, Journal
of British Studies, 8 (1989), 111-40.
Stonebridge, Lindsey, ‘Anxiety at a Time of Crisis’, History Workshop Journal,
45 (1998), 171-98.
Thalassis, Nafsika. 'Soldiers in Psychiatric Therapy : The Case of Northfield
Military Hospital 1942-1946'. Social History of Medicine, 20:2 (2007), 351-68.
Thomson, ‘Psychology and the Mid-Century Crisis’, Psychological Subjects, pp.
209-49.
Sources: Glover, Edward, War, Sadism and Pacifism (1945); Trotter, Wilfred,
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (1919).
Week 8: Psychology, Sex and the Permissive Society
This seminar takes stock of the role of new psychological thinking in changing
attitudes towards sexuality in twentieth-century Britain. Changes in this area
are often seen as central in the emergence of a more permissive society in the
1960s and 1970s. The seminar reflects on this issue in relation to the subject of
homosexuality. It also provides an opportunity to reflect more generally on
the relationship between psychology, psychiatry and the permissive society,
particularly through case studies of the popular psychology of Hans Eysenck,
anti-psychiatry, and the feminist movement of the 1970s. Students will search
contemporary magazines such as New Society, Spare Rib, and the Listener for
evidence on these subjects.
Clare, Anthony, Psychiatry in Dissent (1976).
Collins, Marcus, Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and Women in
Twentieth-Century (2003).
Cook, Hera, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception
1800-1975 (2004).
Crossley, Nick, ‘Fish, Field, Habitus and Madness: On the First Wave Mental
Health Users Movement in Britain’, British Journal of Sociology, 50 (1999), 64770.
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Crozier, Ivan, ‘Taking Prisoners: Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, and the
Construction of Homosexuality 1897-1951’, Social History of Medicine, 13
(2000), 447-66.
Crozier, Ivan Dalley. 'Nineteenth-Century British Psychiatric Writing about
Homosexuality before Havelock Ellis : The Missing Story'. Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 63:1 (2008), 65-102.
Davies, Christie, Permissive Britain: Social Change in the Sixties and Seventies
(1975).
Eysenck, Hans, Rebel with a Cause (1990).
Francis, Martin, ‘Tears, Tantrums, and Bared Teeth: The Emotional Economy
of Three Conservative Prime Ministers, 1951-1963’, Journal of British Studies, 41
(2002), 354-87.
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke; Porter, Roy Sydney, 1946-2002 (ed.). Cultures of
psychiatry and mental health care in postwar Britain and the Netherlands (Clio
Medica, 49). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
Halmos, Paul, The Faith of the Counsellors (1965).
Heelas, Paul, The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the
Sacralization of Modernity (1996).
Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism (1980).
Jennings, Rebecca. '"The most uninhibited party they'd ever been to" : The
Postwar Encounter between Psychiatry and the British Lesbian, 1945-1971'.
Journal of British Studies, 47:4 (2008), 883-904.
Sedgwick, Peter, Psycho-Politics: Laing, Foucault, Goffman, Szasz and the Future
of Mass Psychiatry (1982).
Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man (1977).
Thom, Deborah. '"Beating children is wrong" : Domestic life, Psychological
Thinking and the Permissive Turn'. In Delap, Lucy; Griffin, Ben; Wills, Abigail
(ed.), The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800 (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 261-83.
Thomson, Mathew, ‘Towards the Permissive Society’, in Psychological Subjects,
250-88.
Waters, Chris, ‘Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud and the State: Discourses of
Homosexual Desire in Interwar Britain’, in L. Doan & L. Bland (eds.), Cultural
Sexology: Labelling Bodies and Desires, 1890-1940 (1998), pp. 165-79.
Waters, Chris, ‘Disorders of the Mind, Disorders of the Body Social: Peter
Wildeblood and the Making of the Modern Homosexual’, in Becky Conekin,
Frank Mort, and Chris Waters (eds.), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing
Britain 1945-1964 (1999).
Week 9: From Psychological Subjects to the Therapeutic Society (and Beyond:
to the Rise of the Neurochemical Subject?)
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This seminar considers the extent to which it is only since the era of the
permissive society that psychotherapy has found a mass audience and
examines this. Has this period seen the emergence of a ‘therapy culture’, and
if so why? It also however notes the critique of psychoanalysis and the rise of
cognitive therapy on one hand and neurochemical models of the self on the
other, and explores the reasons for this. The seminar will discuss sources on
current attitudes and initiatives drawn from the media by students over the
course of the module.
* Furedi, Frank, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age
(2004).
Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late
Modern Age (1991).
Hayward, Rhodri. '"Our friends electric" : mechanical models of mind in
postwar Britain'. In Bunn, G. D.; Lovie, Alexander D.; Richards, Graham D.
(ed.), Psychology in Britain : historical essays and personal reflections (Leicester
and London: BPS Books and the Science Museum, 2001), 290-308
James, Oliver, Britain on the Couch (1997).
Nudelman, F. ‘Beyond the Talking Cure: Listening to the Female Testimony
on The Oprah Winfrey Show’, in Pfister, J. & Schnog N., Inventing the
Psychological: Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America (1997), pp.
297-315.
Offer, Avner, Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since
1950
Rose, Nikolas, ‘Assembling the Modern Self’, in Roy Porter (ed.), Rewriting the
Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (1997).
Rose, Nikolas, Governing the Soul, pp. 240-59.
* Rose, Nikolas, The Politics of Life Itself (2007): chapter 7 ‘Neurochemical
Selves’
Shevlin, Mark; Davies, Mark; Walker, Stephanie; Ramkalawan, Tina. 'A nation
under stress : the psychological impact of Diana's death'. In Walter, Tony
(ed.), The mourning for Diana (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 89-95.
Sources: selected items from the press and media
Week 10: Workshop
All students will present papers (10 minutes) on themes and sources related
to the module.
Further Themes
Crime and Punishment
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Crozier, Ivan, ‘Taking Prisoners: Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, and the
Construction of Homosexuality 1897-1951’, Social History of Medicine, 13
(2000), 447-66.
Garland, David, Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (1985).
Radzinowicz, Leon, and Hood, Roger, The Emergence of Penal Policy in
Victorian and Edwardian England (1986).
Waters, Chris, ‘Disorders of the Mind, Disorders of the Body Social: Peter
Wildeblood and the Making of the Modern Homosexual’, in Becky Conekin,
Frank Mort, and Chris Waters (eds.), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing
Britain 1945-1964 (1999).
Waters, Chris, ‘Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud and the State: Discourses of
Homosexual Desire in Interwar Britain’, in L. Doan & L. Bland (eds.), Cultural
Sexology: Labelling Bodies and Desires, 1890-1940 (1998), pp. 165-79.
Wiener, Martin, Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in England,
1830-1914 (1990).
Sources: Modern Records Centre (Howard League Papers).
Politics
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