Histoire de la folie morale

Historical Perspectives on ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’ and ‘Moral Insanity’ 

Conference, London, 12 May 2014


Historical Perspectives on ‘antisocial personality disorder’ and ‘moral insanity’

This conference is a collaboration between an ESRC funded project called ‘Cross disciplinary Perspectives on ‘Anti-social personality disorder’ and the: Centre for the History of the Emotions
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When: Monday May 12th: 9-30 -> 5.00pm

Where: Queen Mary University of London

There is a fee of £15 waged/ £0 unwaged; places are limited so booking is essential.
To book, click here.

Historical Perspectives on ‘anti-social personality disorder’ and ‘moral insanity’

This conference aims to explore the history of the highly contested diagnosis of ‘antisocial Personality disorder’. This label has been used to describe individuals who have major problems with their lives and relationships with others. At their most extreme these difficulties can involve criminal offending, violence and other perverse and harmful behaviours. It is possible to trace histories of similar diagnoses (such as ‘moral insanity’, ‘feebleminded’ and ‘psychopathy’) over 200 hundred years. Despite descriptive similarities there have also been very marked differences in the way that the diagnoses have been conceived and treated.

The conference features speakers from Europe and North America. The key note is byProfessor Nicole Rafter who has written extensively on the history of criminological research.

Other speakers:
Felix Schirmann (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
Emilia Musemeci (University of Catania, Italy)
Bolette Larsen (Lund University, Sweden)
Katariina Parhi (University of Oulu, Finland)
David W Jones (University of East London, UK)

This is the first event of a three year ESRC sponsored series: Cross Disciplinary Thinking about ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’.

For more information about the series, contact Dr David W Jones