Occult Genres and the Certification of Madness in a 19th-Century Lunatic Asylum

Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be “of unsound mind.” These institutional texts are, the authors suggest,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Written communication 2011-04, Vol.28 (2), p.220-250
Main Authors: Berkenkotter, Carol, Hanganu-Bresch, Cristina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Admissions
Archives
Argumentation
Case Records
Certification
Discourse functions
Family & Medical Leave Act 1993-US
Felicity
Foreign Countries
Genre
Health
History
Illocutionary force
Literary Genres
Medical Evaluation
Medicine
Patients
Persuasive Discourse
Power
Psychiatric Hospitals
Psychiatry
Rhetoric
Role
United Kingdom
Written Language
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Summary:Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be “of unsound mind.” These institutional texts are, the authors suggest, “occult genres” that function as complex acts of argumentation, whose illocutionary force depends on the success of their felicity conditions. Through the lens of Austin’s concept of “uptake,” the authors analyze the role of medical certification in the admissions history of two patients at Ticehurst House Asylum in the 1860s-1870s. The authors contend that historical genre analysis plays an important role in the rhetoric of medicine and health, shedding light on the performative power of medical certification, an act essential to the practice of psychiatry.
ISSN:0741-0883
1552-8472
DOI:10.1177/0741088311401557