Vol. 5 No. 2 (2025)
Constructing a Perspective: Epistemology of the Psi Sciences

Articles

Review of Heather Murray’s «Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture»

Published 2025-12-31

  • Karina Levitina

Karina Levitina
European University at Saint Petersburg image/svg+xml

Abstract

The author reviews Heather Murray’s monograph «Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture» (2022), which traces shifts in the cultural perception of psychiatric patients’ experience in the United States over the twentieth century, focusing on the term “asylum” and the ambivalence of psychiatry as an institution. The review shows how changes in emotional culture shaped the re-evaluation of patients’ behavior — from an ideal of calm to the figure of the “automaton” — outlines the book’s methodological framework and body of sources (including the “therapeutic archive” and mass culture), and discusses limitations related to the fragmentary and anonymized nature of archival materials, as well as the analytical burden placed on the category of “patient community”. The review concludes by emphasizing the book’s contribution to the history of American psychiatry and the history of emotions, while acknowledging these methodological caveats.

Keywords

history of psychiatry, history of emotions, psychiatric institutions, patient experience

PDF (Russian)

Author Biography

Karina Levitina

Faculty of Anthropology, European University at St Petersburg, 6/1A Gagarinskaya St., St Petersburg, Russia.

References

  1. Murray H. Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture. — Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. — 272 p. — ISBN: 978-0812253573.
  2. Rothman D. J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Rev. ed. — New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002. — 364 p. — ISBN: 978-0202307152.
  3. Grob G. N. Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940. — Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. — 358 p. — ISBN: 978-0691024134.
  4. Lunbeck E. The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America. — Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. — 440 p. — ISBN: 978-0691025841.
  5. Metzl J. M. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. — Boston: Beacon Press, 2009. — 304 p. — ISBN: 978-0807001271.
  6. Gonaver W. The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880. — Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. — 256 p. — ISBN: 978-1469648446.
  7. Smith K. M. Review of Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture by Heather Murray // Journal of American History. — 2023. — Vol. 110. — No. 2. — P. 385–386.
  8. Garden R. Who Speaks for Whom? Health Humanities and the Ethics of Representation // Medical Humanities. — 2015. — Vol. 41. — No. 2. — P. 77–80.
  9. The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Disability Studies / K. Ellis, M. Kent, K. Cousins (eds.). — London: Routledge, 2025. — 418 p. — ISBN: 978-0367338572.
  10. Spivak G. C. Can the Subaltern Speak? // Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. — Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. — P. 271–313.
  11. Boddice R., Hitzer B. Emotion and experience in the history of medicine: Elaborating a theory and seeking a method // Feeling dis-ease in modern history: Experiencing medicine and illness. — London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. — P. 3–19.
  12. Mezzina R. et al. Social vulnerability and mental health inequalities in the “Syndemic”: Call for action // Frontiers in Psychiatry. — 2022. — Vol. 13.
  13. Foucault M. Istoriya bezumiya v klassicheskuyu epokhu [History of Madness in the Classical Age]. — Saint Petersburg: Universitetskaya kniga, 1997. — 576 p. — ISBN: 5-7914-0017-9. (In Russian).
  14. Garden R. Who Speaks for Whom? Health Humanities and the Ethics of Representation // Medical Humanities. — 2015. — Vol. 41. — No. 2. — P. 77–80.
  15. Gonaver W. The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880. — Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. — 256 p. — ISBN: 978-1469648446.
  16. Smith K. M. Review of Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture by Heather Murray // Journal of American History. — 2023. — Vol. 110. — No. 2. — P. 385–386.
  17. Viney W., Callard F., Woods A. Critical Medical Humanities: Embracing Entanglement, Taking Risks // Medical Humanities. — 2015. — Vol. 41. — No. 1. — P. 2–7.
  18. Heather Murray. Associate Professor // University of Ottawa. — URL: https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/view/profile/members/547 (дата обращения: 30.04.2025).