Through an examination that uses previously unavailable archives and little-used primary literature, this book places the twentieth-century mental hygiene movement within the broad sweep of modern British psychiatry, offering its own reinterpretation of important elements of this history.

Autorentext
Jonathan Toms is a Fellow of the Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Environments. He has a PhD in the history of medicine and was a Wellcome Funded Research Fellow at the University of Warwick Centre for the History of Medicine, UK, from 2006-9. He has published articles on the history of mental health and learning disability.

Inhalt
Preface 1. Moral Treatment and the 'Dialectic of the Family' 2. Moral Treatment for the Community at Large 3. The Mental Hygiene Movement's Emotional Contradictions 4. Dialectic Rightside Up? 5. Developing in the Womb of the Old? 6. Alternative Dialectics 7. Alienation Revisited 8. Dialectic Dismembered Afterword Bibliography Index