Disciplining *les dingues*: Psychiatry and mental health in Asian history
Panel proposal for the Association for Asian Studies annual conference, San Diego, CA, March 21-24, 2013
What is the history of mental illness in Asia? Histories of medicine have focused largely upon the body, yet it was the ‘feeble’ or ‘deviant’ mind of indigenous populations that contributed to the legitimation of a colonial presence. European doctors rarely specialized in mental health and brought their own biases of race and class to diagnoses of madness. Western notions of the causes of and cures for mental illness may have had shared origins, but local peoples’ reception of these could not have been uniform, given the range of preexisting cultural attitudes toward mental disorder across the region. The papers in this panel will compare Western and indigenous perspectives toward treatment, and contribute to the emergent epidemiology of mental health and the development of psychiatry in Asia. Have postcolonial policies toward mental health drawn more upon colonial legacies or precolonial values? How have the conflicts of the twentieth century impacted upon traditional perceptions of how to deal with emotional trauma? We hope to provide an overview of how mental health has been constructed in Asian contexts and the ways in which governments, communities and individuals have attempted to manage its negative manifestations.
Papers from any discipline and on any part of Asia are welcome. Possible topics could include, but are not limited to:
• The history of psychoanalysis in a particular Asian country or countries• Asylum architecture • Distinction between criminal and civil insanity in legal statutes • Attempts to force abdication of power due to perceived mental disorder • Gendered approaches to the treatment of madness • The role of mental health in public health policy in developing Asia Anyone interested in participating in the panel should send an abstract not longer than 300 words and a brief bionote to tjacobsen1@niu.edu by July 27, 2012. |
 | Dr Trude Jacobsen Center for Southeast Asian Studies Northern Illinois University Phone: (815) 753 8079 Fax: (815) 753 1776 Email: tjacobsen1@niu.edu |
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