Double Standards? Forensic psychiatry and penal reform in Berlin, 1960-1980

• Applicant: Dr. Rainer Herrn
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395384490

The project analyses institutions, procedures, and practices of forensic psychiatry in the GDR and the FRG from the late 1950s to the 1980s. Going beyond the disciplinary history, it aims to reconstruct the formation of a social field of knowledge and practice, There were established penal reforms in both German states during these decades. They intended to expand the medical-psychological criteria of diminished responsibility and criminal liability, to decriminalize mass and moral crimes, and to push the therapeutic regimes for offenders. Until now, this process was particularly reconstructed on the basis of juridical, sociopolitical, and psychiatric debates.Attention is needed for the actions performing forensic assessment as well as these debates because they were not only essential for the jurisdiction. It constitutes also the decisive field of negotiations despite for-running the reforms or prompted. Analyzing the manifold relations in a local study is especially suitable to explain this context: Forensic medicine in East and West Berlin was divided in regard to politics and discipline, nevertheless it is to assume that both sides shared the basic diagnostics, etiological concepts and research interests. Furthermore, some indications suggest that the traditional category of >psychopathy< was replaced by the concept of the >disturbed personality<.The research project is based on the unique stock of 14.000 case files in total which was received from the former department of forensic-psychiatry at the Free University (West-Berlin) and from the department of forensic-psychiatry of the Humboldt-University (East-Berlin).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants