Psychiatry and the Legacies of Eugenics: Historical Studies of Alberta and Beyond

Description

From 1928 to 1972, the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act, Canada’s lengthiest eugenic policy, shaped social discourses and medical practice in the province. Sterilization programs – particularly involuntary sterilization programs – were responding both nationally and internationally to social anxieties produced by the perceived connection between mental degeneration and heredity. Psychiatry and the Legacy of Eugenics illustrates how the emerging field of psychiatry and its concerns about inheritable conditions was heavily influenced by eugenic thought and contributed to the longevity of sterilization practices in Western Canada. Using institutional case studies, biographical accounts, and media developments from Western Canada and Europe, contributors trace the impact of eugenics on nursing practices, politics, and social attitudes, while investigating the ways in which eugenics discourses persisted unexpectedly and remained mostly unexamined in psychiatric practice. This volume further extends historical analysis into considerations of contemporary policy and human rights issues through a discussion of disability studies as well as compensation claims for victims of sterilization. In impressive detail, contributors shed new light on the medical and political influences of eugenics on psychiatry at a key moment in the field’s development With contributions by Ashley Barlow, W. Mikkel Dack, Aleksandra Loewenau, Diana Mansell, Guel A. Russell, Celeste Tuong Vy Sharpe, Henderikus J. Stam, Douglas Wahlsten, Paul J. Weindling, Robert A. Wilson, Gregor Wolbring, and Marc Workman. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Prologue: Eugenics and Its Study List of Illustrations Introduction 1. John M. MacEachran and Eugenics in Alberta: Victorian Sensibilities, Idealist Philosophy, and Detached Efficiency 2. The Consequences of Eugenic Steriliz ation in Alberta 3. The Involvement of Nurses in the Eugenics Program in Alberta, 1920–1940 4. The Alberta Eugenics Movement and the 1937 Amendment to the Sexual Sterilization Act 5. Eugenics in Manitoba and the Sterilization Contr oversy of 1933 6. “New Fashioned with Respect to the Human Race”: American Eugenics in the Media at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 7. The “Eugenics Paradox”: Core Beliefs of Progressivism versus Relics of Medical Traditionalism—The Example of Kurt Goldstein 8. Too Little, Too Late: Compensation for Victims of Coerced Sterilization 9. Commentary One 10. Commentary Two Conclusion: Lessons from the History of Eugenics Appendix: Sexual Sterilization, Four Years Experience in Alberta Notes Bibliography Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z