在她的新书中， 制度化性别: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France (康奈尔大学出版社，2021)，密歇根大学历史学教授 杰西休伊特 examines the relationship between class, 性别, and psychiatry in post-Revolutionary France. 凯蒂·奥尔森 斗牛犬的博客 最近与休伊特谈到了该国的庇护制度, 它的含义, 以及他们如何塑造了今天人们对精神疾病的看法.
斗牛犬的博客什么使你决定写这本书?
杰西休伊特: The book originated as my dissertation many years ago at University of 加州, Davis. But it took me a while before I decided I wanted to dive into the process of converting the dissertation into a book. 所以，它已经准备了很长时间. What first drew me to the topic of 性别 and its relationship to psychiatry, 疯狂, 理性是一种直觉意识, 很多女性都有, 女性通常被认为是在表达自己的情感, 而不是一个理性或逻辑的地方. We’ve all seen women run for political office be ignored or pushed aside 因为 they're seen as too emotional. 我环顾四周，心想:“这个想法从何而来?“这显然是不真实的. So, I went to graduate school and started studying the history of the 19th century more in-depth. I knew I wanted to write about women, and I knew I wanted to write about psychiatry. 我查阅了档案, and once I started seeing what doctors had written about their patients and theories, 对我来说，一切都开始步入正轨.
BB在这本书中，你研究了100多年的精神病学历史. How did you arrive at the term “institutionalizing 性别” and what does that look like?
休伊特: 所以，标题 制度化性别 是文字游戏吗. On the one hand, I'm talking about people who were actually institutionalized in insane asylums. Asylums really changed in the latter part of the 1700s and into the 1800s. Before that time, people considered insane weren't really thought of as curable. They'd be locked away if seen as dangerous to themselves or others or even just inconvenient in some way to their families or the local authorities. 没有人试图让他们回归理性. 然而，精神病院显然是为了治愈病人. So, specialized institutions were created to house individuals experiencing psychological issues, 在那里他们将以治愈的名义接受各种治疗.
What all this has to do with 性别 is that doctors had very funny definitions of sanity. 基本上，他们认为一个理智的女人想成为母亲. 她想成为一个妻子. 她不想在外面找工作. She didn't want political power; she would definitely be heterosexual. 所有这些想法都定义了这些医生的理智. 做一个理智的人意味着成为一个成功的专业人士, 一个丈夫, 一个父亲, 供养一个家庭. 这些性别期望与阶级密切相关, 医生们把中产阶级的行为理想化了, 来自相同阶级背景的人. People who didn't follow those rules could be institutionalized 因为 they didn't conform to 性别 expectations.
“性别制度化”也有另一个问题, 更少的文字, 与“制度化”一词相关的含义, as in the way that an idea becomes institutionalized—solidified and spread—across society, 在这种情况下，通过医生的行动.
BB法国人是第一个以这种方式将人制度化的人吗?
休伊特: This process in France occurred simultaneously in England, Central Europe, and the United States. 但法国与其他一些国家不同, 因为, 当时人们正在发展庇护制度, 他们非常关心新的政治形态. During the French Revolution, they created asylums—places where people can become rational again. 这很大程度上是因为, 因为革命, 他们开始把人们视为公民, 不仅仅是君主的臣民. Male citizens needed to be rational to make choices about voting and even women needed to be rational in order to raise good French children (even though women weren’t considered rational enough to get to vote themselves). The French didn't quite care so much about 疯狂 when people were subjects, 因为国王做了决定.
BB你在书中探讨了哪些争议?
休伊特: 有一些. Many people who have studied insanity in the 19th-century focus on how bad it was for women. 不想结婚的女人, 或者有过同性恋关系, 或者有职业抱负的人可能会被认为是疯子. 但同时, there were actually some women who operated asylums of their own. 一个特别的女人, 她是在父母开的精神病院长大的, 后来她自己开了一家收容所. It was a private institution where rich people paid her to oversee their daughters and wives. 她写了一本书，声称自己是精神医学专家, 和那些接受过正规精神病学训练的人一样博学. 她自称是专家，许多男人对此感到不安. 但同时, 她真的很成功, 赚了一大笔钱, 很多人都认为他是专家. I thought that was an interesting controversy and question—can a woman be an expert in psychiatry when she hasn't had a formal education? 她确实知道自己在说什么，而且也很成功.
BB: That brings up another interesting dynamic—the difference between public and private care. 你研究过金钱在精神病学中扮演的角色吗?
休伊特: 我会做一点. 有趣的是, 就数字而言, 5,1820年前后，法国有1000人被收容. 到1900年，有65000人. 它真的爆炸了, 大部分增长发生在公共机构, 因为 a law passed in 1838 that said every department in France needed to have its own psychiatric institution where people who lived in that area could be sent in order to be cured. 它是由国家授权和资助的, 但是他们从来没有给这些机构分配过很多钱, 在心理健康方面，这仍然是常见的情况吗, 当然.
大多数富裕的人会去私人收容所, 因为那些房子真的很好，食物也更好, 而且他们更亲密——那里没有成百上千的人. 这在富裕家庭中更为常见, and people who didn’t have that kind of money were sent to the public institutions. I still found many cases of people who had gotten out of private asylums and charged their doctors with abuse. 这在媒体上很常见. So, in that sense, the private asylums were just as bad as the public ones—maybe even worse.
BB: 你写 about Britney Spears’ conservatorship, which has been in the news lately. 你书中的想法今天是如何发挥作用的?
休伊特: 对于布兰妮·斯皮尔斯的案子，我们并不是什么都知道. 她的病情一直保密. 我们真正知道的是2008年发生了什么, when she started getting a lot of attention for behaving in ways that seemed irrational. 然后她从公众视野中消失了一段时间, 因为 all of her choices and financial decisions were being made by someone else—her father. Recently, she has become more outspoken about the terms of her conservatorship. She's trying to make it so that her father, in particular, doesn't have control over her money. Part of the challenge for her is very similar to the challenges that people, 尤其是女性, 在19世纪 faced if they were trying to push back against family members or the medical establishment institutionalizing them. So, 而布兰妮没有被收容, 同样的无能或无能的语言正在重新出现. 她陷入了困境——她希望能够自己做决定, 但, 因为她被贴上了“疯子”的标签,有些人不相信她说的话.
BB我们可以从法国人和他们对待精神病学的方法中学到什么? 我们从这里往哪里走?
休伊特: 好吧, 从我为这本书所做的研究和思考中, 在19世纪, 更多人接受的观点是，女人天生是单向的——情绪化, 不合逻辑——而男人生来就是另一个. 虽然这些想法今天仍然存在并有影响, 他们远没有以前那么受欢迎了. 项目结束后，我感到异常乐观. 因为即使在当时, there were people who could see that these claims were nonsense—that women weren't naturally irrational any more than men were naturally logical. 我牢记在心, 即使在19世纪, it was clear that these rigid rules about men's and women's behavior were based in culture, 不自然.
了解更多 在威尼斯人平台学习历史.
