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On unsafe ground: the practices and institutionalization of Danish psychiatry, 1850—1920

Copenhagen University, jette{at}brillebo.dk

The aim of this paper is to characterize the efforts of late nineteenth-century Danish psychiatrists to have their field recognized as a discipline in its own right, and their fight to be accepted as practitioners of science, following common scientific standards of exactness and proof. This struggle took place on two fronts: with colleagues in the somatic branches of medicine, and also with lay people and the general public. According to the psychiatrists, laymen persistently contested psychiatry's legitimacy in diagnosing and treating mentally ill patients. Criticism of its scientific objectivity made it difficult for psychiatry to gain respect on an equal footing with other branches of medicine.

Key Words: Denmark • folk psychology • medicine • professionalization • psychiatry • scientificism • specialisms • 19th century

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 3, 321-337 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X07081131


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