Case Histories in Forensic Psychology: Constitution, Transfer, and Transformation of Cases in Various Forms of Text, Media, and Knowledge (1790-1840)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Nicolas Pethes
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; History of Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 279036034

The project analyses the textual forms and epistemological functions of case histories in the emerging field of forensic psychology and its various genres of publication. Contrary to the interest in the preceding project on periodical »Case Archives« during late Enlightenment, the focus is not only on the significance of case collections in the course of establishing new scientific disciplines. Moreover, the projects is interested in the way case histories are transferred and transformed into different genres and publication media during the consolidation process of forensic psychology in the late 18th and early 19th century. The project's first goal is to reconstruct the constitution of forensic psychology as a hybrid discipline influenced by different concurring fields of knowledge and heterogeneous concepts. The adaption of case histories from psychological, medical, and legal sources plays an important role here and will be analyzed within journals of forensic psychology up until the establishment of professional psychiatry during the 1840ies in Germany. This corpus of case collections also provides material for various book projects on forensic psychology between 1790 and 1840. The project's second goal is to analyze this transfer and transformation of cases in new publication and genre contexts - journals, monographs, textbooks, encyclopedias, and popular collections of criminal cases - as well as the changes within the epistemological function of such transferred and transformed cases. This analysis will allow reconstructing the emergence of paradigmatic cases within forensic psychology: The sources will provide insights into the production of »secured« knowledge in contrast to »journal knowledge« that according to Ludwik Fleck is to be considered fragmentary and temporary as well as to the seemingly more secure textbook-knowledge, popular knowledge, and interrelations between forensic psychology and literary fiction. Thus, the project contributes to an understanding of the historical emergence and function of »epistemic genres« and covers an area of research in the fields of both the history of scientific disciplines as well as of scientific genres and publication media that has not been tackled within the current intense international debate on case histories in literature and science.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants