Monthly Archives: April 2016

Lunchtime work-in-progress seminar: Chris Millard

Please join us for our next work-in-progress seminar on Wednesday 4 May, 1pm (Arts Two: Room 3.20) where Chris Millard (QMUL) will give a paper titled: Lies, damned lies, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy: statistics, infant mortality and the courtroom

Abstract:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a number of convictions for baby-murder were overturned, most famously in the case of Sally Clark, a solicitor imprisoned for the murder of her two children. The success of the appeals turned upon the power of statistics to convince juries of guilt or innocence, even if they (the statistics) were erroneous. The statistic in question had been deployed by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who had coined the term ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’ in 1977, and shot to fame following his testimony at the trial of Beverly Allitt. Allitt was later convicted of multiple murder on a children’s ward in Grantham in the early 1990s. This paper contextualises the debate over statistics by looking at the history of infant mortality recording, and how this practice later meshes with the detection of potential child abuse, and even child murder. Concepts such as diagnostic labels (in this case ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’) might be usefully understood as operating within specific environments and within strict limits. When these concepts exceed those limits, or transcend those environments, the potential for disastrous error increases.

All are welcome and lunch will be provided from 12.45. Arts Two is number 35 on this campus map and coloured purple.

 

Lunchtime work-in-progress seminars

The Centre for the History of the Emotions is pleased to announce our next four lunchtime work-in-progress seminars:

  • Wednesday 4 May, 1pm – Chris Millard (QMUL) ‘Lies, damned lies, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy: statistics, infant mortality and the courtroom’ (Arts Two: 3.20)

 

  • Wed 8 June, 1pm – Marie Louise Herzfeld-Schild (University of Cologne), ‘The Nerves of the Soul”. Emotional Knowledge between Music Aesthetics and Medicine (1740-1880)’  (Arts One: 2.07-g)

 

  • Wed 15 June, 1pm – Eva Yampolsky (IUHMSP, University of Lausanne and Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris) ‘The pathology of suicide: a historical study of doctrines and practice in 19th-century France’ (Arts Two: 2.17)

 

  • Wednesday 22 June, 1pm – Richard Ashcroft (QMUL) ‘Emotional Utopias and Emotions of the Future’, Arts Two: Room 2.17

Lunch is provided from 12.45 and all are welcome! QMUL is a 5-minute walk from Mile End tube station. Arts One is building 37 and Arts Two is building 35 on this campus map.

Contact emotions@qmul.ac.uk for more information.

Richard Firth-Godbehere wins essay prize

Congratulations to Richard Firth-Godbehere who has won the Ceræ volume 2 prize for best article by a graduate student or early-career researcher. Richard’s article is titled “For ‘Physitians of the Soule’: The roles of ‘flight’ and ‘hatred of abomination’ in Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in Generall” and the abstract is below. You can read Ceræ‘s announcement of the prize and Richard’s article. Richard is a doctoral candidate in the Centre for the History of the Emotions at QMUL supervised by Thomas Dixon and Elena Carrera.

Abstract

This article attempts to understand how Thomas Wright’s 1604 work, The Passions of the Minde in Generall, might have fitted into his overall mission as an English Catholic preacher, particularly when read via Wright’s understanding of Thomas Aquinas’s passion of fuga seu abominatio. Some historians claim that Wright was a controversialist, previously describing The Passions as either a radical departure from Wright’s mission, or the work of a different Thomas Wright. Earlier attempts to find a missionary element within The Passions have been inadequate. Through a close reading of The Passions, specifically analysing Wright’ʹs interpretation of fuga seu abominatio within the context of Wright’s intended readership, the main message of The Passions, and his background, this article suggests a possible reading of the text as a work aimed specifically at fellow English Catholics. To Wright, the passions of hatred of abomination and flight or detestation, derived primarily from Aquinas’s fuga seu abominatio, were not simply a form of disgust, as often assumed, but the potential worldly or otherworldly harm that someone we love, such as a neighbour, might face from the abominable evil of sin and damnation. By linking hatred of abomination, flight or detestation, and Wright’s particular view of sin together, Wright was teaching English Catholics how these passions might be used to cure diseased souls, turning the work into a guide for preaching.

Work-in-progress seminar: Åsa Jansson ‘”Creating a Life Worth Living”: Emotional Regulation and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Sweden, c. 1995-2009’

The next work-in-progress seminar hosted by the Centre for the History of the Emotions will take place on Monday 25th April at 11am. Note the change in day and time!

“Creating a Life Worth Living”: Emotional Regulation and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Sweden, c. 1995-2009

Åsa Jansson

Abstract:

This paper investigates the uptake of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) into Swedish psychiatry and psychology at the turn of the twenty-first century, with particular focus on the work of Åsa Nilsonne and Anna Kåver. Taking its cue from DBTs creator, US psychologist Marsha Linehan, Swedish research into and application of DBT predominantly focussed on the “regulation” of inappropriate, disproportionate and irrational emotions in (predominantly young) women. In 1995, a Swedish pilot study on DBT was launched as a joint initiative between Stockholm’s primary care trust and the Institute for Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institute (KI). The purpose of the study was threefold: to chart the prevalence of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) among women who had repeatedly attempted suicide; to compare the efficacy of DBT, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and standard psychiatric treatment for this patient group; and to investigate the presence of clinical “subgroups” among suicidal women. The KI study marked the beginning of DBT treatment in Sweden, as well as the start of a fruitful professional relationship between two of the key investigators, Nilsonne and Kåver. The duo published the first comprehensive Swedish-language clinical manual on DBT in 2002 and went on to write extensively on behavioural therapy techniques, both for a professional and a popular audience.

Linehan created DBT as a targeted treatment for (primarily female) patients diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, one of the most controversial and stigmatized psychiatric labels of the post-WWII period. The development of a DBT regime in Sweden was equally closely wedded to BPD. However, while the BPD label has been the target of much criticism both within and outside of psychiatry due to its perceived gender bias, such critique has been remarkably subdued in the Swedish context. On the contrary, multiple clinical trials of DBT carried out after the initial KI study commenced have deliberately recruited exclusively female subjects, predominantly with BPD or associated behavioural patterns. Moreover, the key techniques of DBT have subsequently been disseminated for a popular audience through self-help literature ostensibly targeting young women struggling with strong and uncontrollable emotions. In the most recent such book, Nilsonne merged documented psychological and behavioural effects of DBT with neuroscientific research, producing a model of “emotional regulation” geared toward long-term “restructuring” of the brain.

In sum, this paper will investigate the ambivalent relationship between psychopathology,  neuroscience, and gendered ideas about “dysregulated” emotions, asking what was at work – and at stake – when DBT was imported into Swedish psychiatry and subsequently marketed as a self-help strategy for women unable to successfully regulate their emotions.