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SUMMARY:Mandatory Madness: Colonial Psychiatry and British Mandate Palesti
 ne\, 1920-48 - Chris Wilson\, Faculty of History
DTSTART:20180227T131000Z
DTEND:20180227T140000Z
UID:TALK97759@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Arthur Dudney
DESCRIPTION:Contemporary concerns about pathologising and psychiatrising 
 ‘normal’ emotions\, clear in discussions of anxiety and depression\, a
 re hardly new. From the late nineteenth century onwards\, European psychia
 trists across the colonial world struggled to distinguish between the ‘n
 ormal’ beliefs or behaviours of colonised subjects\, and those which wer
 e ‘abnormal’ – beyond the bounds of what could be considered typical
  or expected. In my talk\, I want to explore how the normal and the abnorm
 al mind were identified and used in the context of British Mandate Palesti
 ne between 1920 and 1948. While this was obviously a question of importanc
 e to psychiatrists and colonial medical officers\, it also had a special u
 rgency for legal officials. If a defendant committed a crime believing tha
 t the devil had possessed them\, for instance\, were they to be judged ins
 ane and therefore acquitted of legal responsibility for their actions\, or
  were they to be deemed to have been acting in a way typical of their race
 \, class\, gender\, religion – and therefore held to account? The questi
 on of separating the normal from the abnormal thus became quite literally 
 a matter of life and death for defendants.
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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