Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation's Capital

405 Pages·2019·15.124 MB·English

by  Martin Summers

Madness in the City
of Magnificent Intentions

Madness in the City
of Magnificent Intentions
A History of Race and Mental Illness
in the Nation’s Capital
MARTIN SUMMERS
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1
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For Karl

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. “Humanity Requires All the Relief Which Can Be Afforded”: The
Birth of the Federal Asylum 13
2. The Paradox of Enlightened Care: Saint Elizabeths in the Era of
Moral Treatment, 1855–1 877 39
3. “From Slave to Citizen”: Race, Insanity, and Institutionalization in
Post- Reconstruction Washington, DC, 1877– 1900 71
4. Care and the Color Line: Race, Rights, and the Therapeutic
Experience, 1877– 1900 95
5. “Mechanisms of the Negro Mind”: Race and Dynamic Psychiatry
at Saint Elizabeths, 1903– 1937 125
6. “He Is Psychotic and Always Will Be”: Racial Ambivalence and
the Limits of Therapeutic Optimism, 1903– 1937 153
7. Mental Hygiene and the Limits of Reform: Saint Elizabeths in the
Community, 1903– 1937 190
8. “An Example for the Rest of the Nation”: Challenging Racial
Injustice at Saint Elizabeths, 1910–1 955 217
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9. Whither the Negro Psyche: Integration and Its Aftermath,
1945– 1970 247
10. From Model to Emblem: Community Mental Health and
Deinstitutionalization, 1963– 1987 277
Conclusion 309
Notes 315
Selected Bibliography 369
Index 377
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is not the book that I set out to write. Trained as a cultural historian of
the nineteenth- and twentieth- century United States, with particular interests in
race, gender, and sexuality, I intended to write a book about black masculinity,
institutions, and the state when I began my research in 2001. A chance encounter
in the National Archives with a dusty, brittle admissions book of a federal insane
asylum that summer set me on the path to writing this history of race and mental
illness in the nation’s capital. Over these past eighteen years, I have learned a
great deal about the field of medical history and even more about myself as a his-
torian. Along the way, I have accumulated many debts which I am grateful that
I now have the opportunity to acknowledge.
My largest intellectual debt is owed to scholars who showed a great deal of
enthusiasm, encouragement, and support for my project in its earliest stages.
As someone who was excited yet tentative about entering a field in which I had
no graduate training, my initial trepidation was alleviated by the early positive
responses from James Mohr, Ellen Herman, and Laura Briggs. Jim and Ellen, my
colleagues at the University of Oregon, were some of my most ardent champions
and wisest counsels. I thank them for the years of advice and friendship that
they have given me, as well as for all of the letters they have written on my be-
half. Laura was a commenter on a paper that I gave early in the research process,
and her engagement with the work and thoughtful remarks helped shape the
scope of the project and the kinds of questions that I ended up pursuing. She
has remained a steadfast source of support over the past dozen years, and I am
deeply appreciative.
My growth as a scholar has been made possible by the relationships that I have
developed and the conversations that I have had over the past several years with
other scholars who are doing important work on the history of race and med-
icine. I thank Dennis Doyle, Sharla Fett, Susan Reverby, Samuel Roberts, and
Keith Wailoo for the interest they have shown in my work, for their camaraderie,
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