Bed and bath. Objects and spaces of therapeutic acting in psychiatry of the 19th and 20th century. An outline of a material history of psychiatry

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 267215076

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

The research project took the introduction of bed treatment and the permanent bath into German-speaking psychiatry at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as a starting point to ask about the material dimensions of psychiatric practice using the example of the sickbed and the bathtub. Both treatment methods were based on the lying position of the patient, whether in a hospital bed or in a tub filled with lukewarm water, whereby the treatments could be scheduled for several days, weeks, or even months. The introduction of these treatments was intended to establish a “modern” and “humane” psychiatry, for which bed and bath were central and gave rise to new psychiatric spaces. The aim of the project was to write a history of psychiatry from the perspective of bed and bath using approaches of Material Culture Studies. Using the example of the hospital bed and the permanent bath, the project could demonstrate how the treatment methods produced their manifold effects through the arrangement of spaces (hospital room, bathing room), things (bed, tub) and bodies (patients, doctors, nurses) and the practices, perceptions and sensory regimes that they produced, which were not only aimed at calming the patients, but should also suggest to the patients that they were ill and therefore in need of treatment. On the basis of a qualitative analysis of the material sources, the project worked out which practices the objects evoked on the part of the patients as well as on the part of the practitioners, with which perceptions they were intertwined, in which way they framed encounters and relationships, and which spatialmaterial as well as sensual configurations they produced. For the project, professional journals and books from the period between 1860 and 1960 resp. 1985 as well as medical and administrative files from different asylums and clinics and a collection of photos from the LWV Hessen were evaluated. For the research on selftestimonies of patients, the holdings of the Prinzhorn Collection, the Psychiatry Museum in Bern, and the image database of the Swiss Institute for Art Research were used. The results of the project can contribute to a deeper understanding of illness experiences, which are often characterized by the practice of lying down, and sensitize for the importance of the material environment in this context.

Publications

• Wahnsinn, Psychiatrie und Raum. Begleitheft zum Themenschwerpunkt im Medizinhistorischen Museum. Hamburg
  Ankele, Monika
  
• „Die gelbe Tapete“, Medizinhistorisches Museum Hamburg, 03.10.2015
  Monika Ankele
  
• Aufführen, Aufzeichnen, Anordnen: Zur Provokation von Sichtbarkeit in therapeutischen Kontexten, Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin des UKE Hamburg in Kooperation mit der Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen Ottersberg, 27.- 28.05.2016
  Monika Ankele, Céline Kaiser & Sophie Ledebur
  
• The sickbed as a ‘patient-maker’? Reflections on a (seemingly) common object and its meaning for psychiatry, Internationale Konferenz „Objects of psychiatry: Between thing-making, reification and personhood“, Burghölzli, Zürich, 11.06.2016
  Monika Ankele
  
• Bedside Scenes. On the Scenography and Performativity of the Sickbed, Symposium „Spectacular Evidence: Theatres of the observed mind“, Artsadmin/Toynbee Studios, London, 24.03.2017
  Monika Ankele
  
• Das Krankenbett als Objekt, Raum und Material, Alpe-Adria- Universität Klagenfurt, 19.12.2017
  Monika Ankele
  
• From an object’s view: Das Krankenbett und die materielle Kultur der Psychiatrie, Internationales Forschungszentrum für Kulturwissenschaften, Wien, 27.03.2017
  Monika Ankele
  
• ,,Material Cultures of Psychiatry“, Internationale Tagung, Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin des Universitätsklinikums Hamburg-Eppendorf / Medizinhistorisches Museum Hamburg in Kooperation mit der Universität Luxemburg (Benoît Majerus), 02.-04.05.2018
  Monika Ankele
  
• Das Krankenbett als Beziehungsraum, Vortragsreihe „studio“, Mariann-Steegmann-Institut, Universität Bremen, 23.01.2018
  Monika Ankele
  
• Im Dialog. Lesende PatientInnen. Historische Anthropologie, 26(1), 8-28.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Sich aufführen. Rauminterventionen und Wissenspraktiken in der Psychiatrie um 1900. Aufführen – Aufzeichnen – Anordnen, 71-89. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Aufführen – Aufzeichnen – Anordnen. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
  Ankele, Monika; Kaiser, Céline & Ledebur, Sophie (Eds.)
  
• Horizontal Scenographies. The Sickbed as a Setting of Psychiatric Subjectivation. Scenographies of the Subject, 43-58. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• The blanket. Textile architectures in psychiatric institutions around 1900, Konferenz „Material medicine: Objects and Bodies”, Association for Medical Humanities, University of Plymouth, 26.06.2019
  Monika Ankele
  
• „Das Krankenbett. Von der Wahrnehmung der Welt im Liegen“, Medizinhistorisches Museum Hamburg, 14.11.2019
  Monika Ankele
  
• Constructing Objects, Transforming Practices: The Sickbed in Psychiatry, Konferenz „Feeling Dis/ease”, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung Berlin, 31.01.2020
  Monika Ankele
  
• Material Configurations of Care and their Ethical Implications. The Prolonged Bath in Psychiatry, in: European Journal for Nursing History 1/2020, S. 101-123, open access.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Material Cultures of Psychiatry. Histoire, 10-29. transcript Verlag.
  Ankele, Monika & Majerus, Benoît
  
• Material Cultures of Psychiatry. transcript Verlag.
  Ankele, Monika & Majerus, Benoît (Eds.)
  
• Materielle Konfigurationen der Pflege und ihre ethischen Implikationen. Das Dauerbad in der Psychiatrie, in: European Journal for Nursing History 1/2020, S. 101-123, open access,
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Sehen/Berühren. Das Krankenbett als Beziehungsraum. Unbehaust Wohnen, 325-343. transcript Verlag.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• The Fabric of Seclusion: Textiles As Media of (Spatial) Interaction in Isolation Cells of Mental Hospitals. Histoire, 140-157. transcript Verlag.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Becoming a ‘good’ hospital? Spatial configurations in mental asylums in Germany around 1900, Konferenz „Space and the Hospitals,” International Network for the History of Hospitals, Lissabon, 26.05.2021, online
  Monika Ankele
  
• Dauerbäder und Wasserbetten. Therapie in der Badewanne, in: Hamburger Ärzteblatt 2/2021, S. 34-35. ISSN: 0017-6915.
  Monika Ankele
  
• Dinggeschichten in der Psychiatrie, Historische Sammlung der Medizin und Pharmazie der Universität Kiel, 08.06.2021, online
  Monika Ankele
  
• Eine Geschichte der Psychiatrie aus der Perspektive des Bettes, 27. Symposium der Gesellschaft für Krankenhausgeschichte, Medizinische Universität Wien, 01.10.2021
  Monika Ankele
  
• From a patient’s point of view: A sensual-perceptual approach to bed treatment. Feeling Dis-ease in Modern History. Bloomsbury Academic.
  Ankele, Monika
  
• Psychiatrie und Raum in historischer Perspektive, in: Maierhofer, Magdalena/Temmel, Evelyn/Lehner, Judith M./Schelling, Kathrin/Benz, Lene (Hg.): Space Anatomy: Die räumliche Dimension österreichischer Gesundheitspraxis, Berlin: Jovis 2022, S. 14-20. ISBN 978-3-86859-770-7.
  Monika Ankele
  
• ‘Demands her clothes, wants to feel human again for once’: Dimensions of Clothing in Mental Institutions around 1900, in: Lamot, Yoon Hee / De Wyngaert, Elisa et al. (Hg.), Mirror Mirror. Fashion and the Psyche (Antwerpen: Hannibal 2022), S. 73-89. ISBN: 978 94 6436 629 7.
  Monika Ankele
  
• „(...) dass die Schädigung der ruhigen Kranken durch die Unruhigen eine Grenze bildet, welche nicht überschritten werden darf.“ Raum, Körper und Sinne in der Psychiatrie um 1900, in: Revisit. Humanities & Medicine in Dialogue 1/2022, S. 193-217
  Ankele, Monika
  
• „Lying In: Bed”, im Rahmen der Veranstaltungsreihe “Confabulations. art practice | art history | critical medical humanities (University of Durham; Queens University Canada; University of Lincoln), gem. mit Céline Kaiser und Angela Alves, 29.03.2023, online
  Monika Ankele