Greg Eghigian, PhD

Over the decades, cinema has taken great interest in psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy. Film has served as one of the key ways by which the general public have come to view the work of clinicians. In this regard, one of the most influential films of the mid-20th century was 

The film has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate and has been criticized for its portrait of its female protagonist, her fellow patients, and hospital staff. Ben Harris, PhD, has recently published an article in the journal 

 entitled “The Snake Pit: Mixing Marx With Freud in Hollywood,” in which he uses archival sources to revisit the film’s making and reception.

 We took some time to discuss his findings.

Dr Harris is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire. He has a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Vanderbilt University and has held post-doctoral fellowships in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin. His research interests include the role of Leftist politics in the history of psychology and psychiatry. In 2015, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for the History of Psychology.

First of all, can you provide a basic recap of the film?

 was an award-winning film that showed the hospitalization and recovery of Virginia Cunningham at an upstate New York psychiatric hospital. A confused but resilient young woman, Virginia progressed through various overcrowded, understaffed wards to Ward 1—the best. She then relapses and ends up in Ward 33—overflowing with the most disturbed patients. This seemed to her like a medieval snake pit, into which the mad were tossed to shock them into health. Realizing that she is healthier than the worst-off patients, Virginia gradually regains her sanity. She is aided by the saint-like Dr Kik, who uses ECT to connect with Virginia, followed by “narcosynthesis,” and psychotherapy informed by Freud. As her childhood fixations are unearthed and her transference to Dr Kik is resolved, Virginia comes to love her husband again, where before she had denied his existence. Throughout her hospitalization, Virginia connects with fellow patients who struggle with their illness and the uncertainties of the post-WWII era. Olivia de Havilland’s portrayal of Virginia Cunningham won an Academy Award nomination and landed her on the cover of 

The film has received a good deal of criticism over the years. What have been some of the main points detractors have made about it?

Critics in Women’s Studies saw the women staff members in the psychiatric hospital as single and emotionally incomplete—propaganda that women would only find happiness and their true nature in marriage and home life. They also complained that the film gave the main character (Virginia) a Freudian complex that required a male therapist to help her resolve.



You make the point that at the time, however, viewers and reviewers of the film largely saw it quite differently. What did they generally take away from the film?

Mainstream critics saw it as emotionally gripping and recognized it as the first film to portray mental illness in a non-sensationalized form. Its overall impact was reflected by 

 magazine putting Olivia de Havilland on its cover.

Despite the Freudian subplot, political progressives saw it as good propaganda for bettering the conditions of a neglected group of people: the mentally ill. Thus, the Communist Party’s West Coast daily said it was “a film achievement” that called for hospital reform rather than “new regiments of psychoanalysts.” 

are unaware that it was a novel before it was a film. You have delved into the life of its author, Mary Jane Ward. What can you tell us about her and how her own experiences informed both the novel and the film?

In both the film and Ward’s novel, Virginia rebelled against the bureaucratic rules and anti-therapeutic attitudes of many of the staff. She had a wicked sense of humor, and in the book, she was antiracist and a socialist—as Ward was in real life. In the book, she came to dislike the Freudian views of her therapist, while in the film she came to resolve her emotional problems through talking therapy. 

In real life, conflict over giving a pacifist speech precipitated Ward’s first breakdown. Also, her relationship with her therapist reawakened unconscious conflicts over a boyfriend who had died. However, her therapist (who trained with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann) judged that she was psychologically too fragile to undergo talking therapy that would uncover repressed material.

One of the more intriguing things you did was to look at unpublished correspondence and drafts of the film’s screenplay, to get a fuller view of those involved in the production of the film. What did you learn by looking at these materials?

The correspondence shows how closely the screenwriters worked with prominent psychiatrists on the plot and its details. One can also see the political consciousness and solidarity that existed among Hollywood screenwriters, some of whom would soon be blacklisted. 

My most stunning discovery was the last scene in the film, created by the screen writers, but replaced secretly by the producers. It showed Virginia to be socially conscious, pledging to continue the struggle for reform from the outside. This was replaced by a saccharine, antifeminist scene in which Virginia asks her husband to restore her wedding ring to her finger as they leave the hospital.

You note that 2 of the film’s screenwriters visited a state hospital and talked to staff and patients there. Do you have a sense of how this affected their approach to the project?

Building on the novel’s details, I think it helped them convey the sights and sounds of a huge, custodial institution in which keeping order was most important.

Based on what you have learned, you argue that—contrary to more recent criticism—the film was not intended to idealize conformity, but just the opposite. How so?

Consistent with the antifascist spirit of World War II, we see patients rebelling against authority that is arbitrary, such as the rule that no one in one back ward can step on “the rug.” Rather than accept the socioeconomic status quo, patients used humor to express their fears about the post-war economy and their post-hospital lives. Finally, in preparation for her discharge, Virginia hands off the care of a disturbed young woman that she has been looking out for to another fellow patient. This provided a collectivist touch that was the opposite of deferring to male physicians.

What do you see as the legacy of the film?

I began my research believing that it raised the consciousness of the public about mental illness. It took a 

obituary for Charles Schlaifler to make concrete the film’s direct impact on mental health policy and care. Schlaifler, who appears nowhere in the history of psychiatry, was a publicist at 20th Century Fox. He did the publicity for 

 and learned in detail the problems facing the mentally ill. He became an advocate for mental health reform in the 1950s, including greater funding for research. He used his publicist skills to become a highly effective Washington lobbyist and advocate, welcomed to Congressional hearings based on his work on 

is professor of history at Penn State University. He specializes in the history of psychiatry and mental health and is member of the

1. Harris B. The snake pit: Mixing Marx with Freud in Hollywood. 

. April 22, 2021. Advance online publication. 

Articles

Two doctors discuss the controversial, highly debated film, The Snake Pit. 

Into the Snake Pit: An Interview with Ben Harris, PhD 

There is no doubt about it. This has been an exhausting and stressful year. The global pandemic, rising unemployment, social distancing, the United States presidential election, wildfires, and then, of course, the so-called “

 For good reason, many have found the year to be among the most worrisome in recent memory.

Perhaps we can take some small comfort, however, in the knowledge that our ancient, medieval, and early modern forebears successfully stared down threats and misfortunes on multiple fronts. Living in a world they understood to be teaming with ominous apparitions, imposing creatures, and dark forces, they faced not only artificial and natural disasters, but also calamities of a supernatural kind. So, consider these 5 monstrous entities with whom our ancestors had to share this terrestrial plane.

Some of the earliest written sources we have from Mesopotamia confirm that belief in demons (from the Latin daemones) is very ancient indeed. Throughout antiquity, demons were generally considered to be neutral supernatural beings, equally capable of helping and harming humans. When malevolent, however, they could be cunning and take on different forms. There are numerous tales from ancient China, for instance, of demon dogs who acted like or possessed human beings. For example, according to the politician and historian Ying Shao (140 to 206 CE), when a dog showed up after the spirit of a dead man who had been terrorizing a household seemed to leave, residents decided to cane the poor beast to death.

In the Middle Ages, Europeans came to view demons as unequivocally diabolical, working, they believed, in concert with the Devil. Late-medieval writers spoke of demons, sprites, and goblins creeping around lakes, rivers, and mountains, killing miners, pestering animals, and luring men and women into damnable carnal relations.

 None of this talk, however, deterred most folk from continuing to appeal for aid from what were thought to be kindlier demons.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had a variety of names for what we call a ghost, including shade, manifestation, image, cloud, and breeze. Terms like these seem to suggest that ancient ghosts were perceived to be intangible, but in fact many were corporeal enough to eat, drink, hug, and even have sex. Tending to be either white or black in hue, they could appear as tiny winged creatures, 12-foot giants, or anything in between.

What is consistent in tales about ghosts well into the 19th century is that they generally appeared in order to remedy an injustice: either the departed had not been properly laid to rest and now sought an appropriate burial, or the dead party demanded revenge for their murder or killing. Unsurprisingly then, old battlefields especially were considered sites of large numbers of angry and harrowing specters.

Stories of human beings taking on the shape of a wolf also go back to antiquity, where it was believed that while some did so voluntarily, others were condemned to such fate as a punishment by a god. What made werewolves especially menacing and loathsome to the general public was the accusation that the creatures killed and devoured their human victims. In 16th-century Europe, suspicions that people were using magic to turn themselves into wolves led authorities to try, convict, and burn at the stake a number of individuals for the crime of lycanthropy.

One of the most infamous cases involved a German man known as Peter Stumpp, convicted and executed in 1589 for being a werewolf. Stumpp’s crimes were in fact quite gruesome, as he murdered at least 13 children and several men and women, apparently cannibalizing some of their bodies. As a punishment, he was tortured with hot pincers and had his flesh torn, his arms and legs broken, and his head cut off and displayed on a pike to ward off any other potential werewolves.

Werewolves are perhaps the most recognizable shapeshifters, but they certainly were not the only ones. Folklore is replete with reports of a wide range of shapeshifting beings, usually humans turning into animals or inanimate objects. Not all were malicious, but many were. The Ukrainian vedmak, a male witch capable of becoming a horse, a moth, or an inanimate object, consorted with the Devil and was said to kill livestock, destroy harvests, and bring disease. Slavic lore spoke of the leshy, a woodland man with green eyes, hoofs, horns, and a tail. It was believed the leshy could transform himself into plants and animals and enjoyed kidnapping women, confusing travelers, and even sometimes tickling people to death.

Europe certainly has not been alone in chronicling accounts of shapeshifting malefactors. Ancient Japanese folklore mentions a malevolent, shapeshifter called the tanuki. Originally described as a racoon-like dog, the tanuki was thought to be able turn itself into a human form, haunting and possessing people. In a particularly grisly anecdote, a tanuki killed an old woman, then turned her into soup, after which the tanuki took on the form of the old woman and fed the soup to the dead woman’s husband.

Ancient Greek sources speak of some magicians and witches having the ability to not only conjure and placate ghosts, but also raise the dead. There appears to be little to no evidence of individuals actually performing this art of necromancy. But descriptions of elaborate rituals succeeding in bringing corpses back to life, sometimes with grim consequences, were well known. In a particularly harrowing instance, a mother revivified her dead son, who then reprimanded her and predicted her imminent, violent death.

Medieval Europe was also the location of numerous sightings of the risen dead, an occurrence featured in a number of Jewish sources. The writings of German-Jewish Pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz) of the late 12th and early 13th centuries, for example, offer up a bounty of monsters and monstrous creatures (demons, dragons, witches, vampires, werewolves), including the walking dead.

 In most accounts, they proved to be quite friendly, even helpful. The fact, however, that most of these medieval zombies greeted the living with the refrain “I will not harm you” testifies to the fear they provoked.

It might be tempting to look back at stories like these and dismiss them as superstitious nonsense. But it is important to keep in mind that identifying, imagining, interpreting, and discussing monsters have been preoccupations of cultures since recorded time. There are reasons for this. Our word “monster” derives from Greek and Latin terms referring to a portent or warning of some kind. Monsters are messengers, perceived to be bearers of messages of great importance. In this way, they give communities an opportunity to declare some of their most cherished values, to teach lessons, and to inspire heroism. Today, we too have our own monsters to face (both man-made and natural) and like our ancestors, we invariably will use them to consider, debate, and struggle for the things we hold most dear.

is professor of history at Penn State University. He specializes in the history of psychiatry and mental health and is member of the 

1. Mike Baker. ‘Murder hornets’ in the U.S.: the rush to stop the Asian Giant Hornet. 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/asian-giant-hornet-washington.html

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The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture

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Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity

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10. Shyovitz DI. The might of the living dead: thinking with zombies in the Jewish tradition. Paper presented at Workshop on Jewish Zombies, Penn State University, 26 October 2020.

Throughout history and across cultures, monsters have helped communities teach lessons and affirm their values. 

We Think We Have Problems? 5 Supernatural Entities the Premodern World Had to Worry About

As we all try to acclimate ourselves to the rapidly changing circumstances brought about by the 

, comparisons are being made between this pandemic and the so-called 

 was that Spain was one of the only countries at the time to not censor reports of cases, and so it was widely publicized there by late-fall 1918.) The Spanish flu proved to be peculiar for several reasons, most noteworthy of course due to the high morbidity (as many 500 million were infected) and mortality (around 50 million deaths). It also came in waves. In the US, there were four such waves: first in spring 1918, again in August 1918 (epidemiologically the most devastating of the four), yet again in winter 1918/1919, and a final return in early 1920. Finally, the disease was unlike most flus in that it decimated even the traditionally more robust segments of the population (ages 20-40), taking the lives of many within 3 days of showing symptoms.

Since the pandemic of the Spanish flu, researchers dedicated themselves to identifying the origins and nature of the virus. It took decades, however, before virologists succeeded. Starting in the mid-1990s, 

, and his team were able to carry out a sequence and phylogenetic analysis of 1918 influenza virus genes and identified it to be an H1N1 virus of avian origin.

Until around 1970, historical research about the pandemic had been virtually non-existent. Some novels and popular histories appeared over the decades, but it was Alfred Crosby’s 1976 book 

America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

) that paved the way for international research about the subject.

 One of the book’s major achievements was to draw attention to the fact that the pandemic quickly disappeared as a topic of public conversation soon after it was over, ignored by periodicals and textbooks for decades. To many historians, this collective silence is as much a part of the pandemic’s story as the course of the disease itself.

In comparison to other aspects of the pandemic, little research has been done on the long-term impact of the Spanish flu on mental health. One of the few researchers to investigate the subject was historical demographer 

 Looking at asylum hospitalizations in Norway from 1872 to 1929, Mamelund found that the number of first-time hospitalized patients with mental disorders attributed to influenza increased by an average annual factor of 7.2 in the 6 years following the pandemic.

 In addition, he pointed out that Spanish flu survivors reported sleep disturbances, depression, mental distraction, dizziness, and difficulties coping at work, and that influenza death rates in the United States during the years 1918-1920 significantly and positively related to suicide.

Mamelund is among a number of scholars who have noted what many suspect to be a connection between the Spanish flu and a pronounced increase in neurological diseases. By 1919 and 1920, physicians and researchers in Great Britain were already reporting a marked rise in nervous symptoms and illnesses among some patients recovering from influenza infection; among other symptoms, depression, neuropathy, neurasthenia, meningitis, degenerative changes in nerve cells, and a decline in visual acuity were cited.

Encephalitis lethargica: another connection or vulnerability?

 coincided with the Spanish flu; it reached epidemic proportions alongside the Spanish flu. As Hoffman and Vilensky have recently described, the syndrome was characterized by two, often, blended phases:

During the acute phase, patients typically experienced excessive sleepiness, disorders of ocular motility, fever, and movement disorders, although virtually any neurological sign or symptom could be exhibited, with day-to-day, and even hour-by-hour shifts in symptomatology. The chronic phase could occur months to years later and was most commonly characterized by parkinsonian-like signs.

Psychiatrists and neurologists first reported encountering encephalitis lethargica symptoms in 1916 and 1917 in Austria and France. By 1919, cases had become common throughout Europe, the United States, Canada, Central America, and India. All told, approximately 1 million people worldwide were affected by encephalitis lethargica between its outbreak in 1916 until the early 1930s. While many clinicians (both at the time and since then) have surmised an association between encephalitis lethargica and the Spanish flu,

 there is no conclusive evidence of causality.

Some medical and social historians have been tracing connections between the pandemic and the other catastrophic global event of the time-World War I. In this regard, historians have flagged the ways in which the war efforts depleted medical personnel, helped disseminate the virus through the mobilization of troops, and created the conditions for the mutation of an otherwise mild flu virus.

When it comes to mental health, the historical record shows that the pandemic, like the war, took a toll on the emotional resilience of those not (or not yet) in harm’s way. The massive and sudden loss of life plunged many into a chronic state of helplessness and anxiousness. A large portion of the population were affected by the loss of loved ones. Parents had to come to grips with losing a child (or even several children), while some children suddenly found themselves parentless. In November 1918, 31,000 children in New York City alone had lost one or both parents. For others, the experience left them feeling a mix of guilt, anger, confusion, and abandonment. Surviving health professionals were not immune to such sentiments, with many of them noting that they were haunted by a sense of frustration and grief, even years later.

Like all mass encounters with infectious disease, the Spanish flu pandemic had its own unique features. If history teaches us anything, it is that we should always be measured in how we glean lessons from the past. That said, the example of the influenza of 1918-1920 gives us reason to expect that the present pandemic will carry in tow its own set of mental health challenges.

This article was originally posted April 3, 2020, and has since been updated. -Ed

is professor of history at Penn State University. He specializes in the history of psychiatry and mental health and is member of the 

The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Virus

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Effects of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 on Later Life Mortality of Norwegian Cohorts Born About 1900

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5097223_Effects_of_the_Spanish_Influenza_Pandemic_of_1918-19_on_Later_Life_Mortality_of_Norwegian_Cohorts_Born_About_1900

Parkinsonism and Neurological Manifestations of Influenza Throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries

Encephalitis Lethargica: 100 Years After the Epidemic

Out in the Cold and Back: New-Found Interest in the Great Flu.

The Recent Wave of ‘Spanish’ Flu Historiography.

American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press; 2012.

Have we learned anything? Looking back at the Spanish flu epidemic as the world deals with the COVID pandemic.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic and Mental Health: A Historical Perspective

The DSM has recognized trauma- and stress-related disorders since its third edition in 1980. Historians of psychiatry have shown that the contemporary concept of a traumatic stress disorder first began to take shape in the wake of World War II, when the debilitating effects of Nazi persecution and murder on its victims began to be looked at as health problems for those affected.

 Since then, a wide range of ex-political prisoners-including those from Chile, Iran, Myanmar, Palestine, South Africa, and Vietnam, to name just a few-have been examined and discussed by mental health specialists.

Among the most studied have been former political prisoners of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or more commonly known as East Germany. The communist state there, founded in 1949, proved to be uncompromising with any citizen who appeared to be out of step with its directives, establishing a relentless state police apparatus (the Stasi) and a system of prisons and youth work camps.

Though the regime came to an end in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is estimated that at its height in the 1980s, the GDR held around 200,000 political prisoners. A 2013 follow-up 

of 93 such inmates found that “results indicate a trauma-related long-term morbidity,” albeit one that is “less stable than previously assumed.”

 now provides us with an intimate look at the toll imprisonment has had on some of these former captives. 

) offers four ex-political prisoners a chance to discuss their experiences frankly and in their own words. In June of this year, I was invited to attend a screening of the film in Berlin, followed by a question and answer session with director JÃ¼rgen Haase and two of the film’s featured subjects.

Karl-Heinz Bomberg was a physician and singer-songwriter, when he was charged with “anti-state agitation” and placed in a Stasi-run jail. Writer and human rights activist Siegmar Faust was also arrested for “anti-state agitation” and sentenced to three and a half years detention. Katrin BÃ¼chel is now a photographer, but after running away from home in her youth, she was placed in reeducation work camps over four years, deemed to be a girl with “authority issues” and “personality abnormalities.” Thomas Hannemann, a mechanic, was given a sentence of four and a half year for attempting to escape the country. Together, they provide a compellingly stark glimpse into the experiences of political detainees there.

The first part of the film chronicles their initial encounters with arrest, interrogation, and detention. Siegmar Faust, for instance, recalls thinking at the time that everything was like out of a movie one sees about the Nazis. “I didn’t do anything. This can’t be happening,” he remembers saying to himself. Most of them also describe an overwhelming sense of helplessness and loneliness, as they were badgered by interrogators, put in dark cells, and isolated from their families and other inmates.

For those having gone through it, the time spent in solitary confinement proved to be the most torturous. Karl-Heinz Bomberg recalls being beset by sweats and panic attacks. Thomas Hannemann found the absence of anyone to talk to and anything to do especially crippling. The experience was arguably even more vexing for Katrin BÃ¼chel, who was still a minor at the time of her confinement. She was sent to the high security youth camp at Torgau at one point, for exhibiting what records show was a dizzying array of red flag indicators, including “deviant behavior,” anxiety, sedition, petulance, bedwetting, thumb sucking, bullying, and feeling insulted. Placed in solitary confinement, wet, cold, afraid, and anxious, she tried to kill herself. While she didn’t succeed, others did.

The lack of personal freedom was not the only brutalizing feature of imprisonment. BÃ¼chel and other youth work camp detainees were forced to take part in reeducation drills, including presenting talks in which they had to recite communist party dogma. Thomas Hannemann’s daughter was given up for adoption following his arrest. And Karl-Heinz Bomberg speaks of coming to the “catastrophic” realization that any number of his fellow inmates were actually operating as informants to the police.

Release from internment brought immediate relief to all of the subjects of the film-but the solace proved short-lived. Each describes how, even now, unforeseen effects of their detention have haunted them. Siegmar Faust recounts how small, mundane things and encounters would prompt him to burst into tears and how he constantly had to remind himself that ordinary conversations were not interrogations. The singer and clinician 

 notes that he still finds himself swept up in a perpetual vigilance, a compulsion to always be on the look-out. BÃ¼chel continues to have trouble sleeping and trusting others. Thomas Hannemann likewise has difficulties with sleep, but he is also plagued by a variety of aches and pains and is easily rattled when hears a heavy door closing. “Everything is still very present,” he laments.

The discussion following the film provided the director JÃ¼rgen Haase along with BÃ¼chel and Bomberg to discuss the making of the film (which was seven years in development) and address comments and questions from the audience. As is frequently the case when life in East Germany is discussed in public forums in Germany, the conversation at times turned into a referendum on the former regime and its legacy. Was the GDR totalitarian? To what extent do former East German citizens deliberately avoid hearing about these kinds of abuses? Why is it that it falls to the victims to raise these matters and demand recognition? Exchanges were sometimes quite heated. And maybe that is to be expected. As historians and mental health professionals both know, in the words of the writer William Faulkner, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the evening, however, came when Katrin BÃ¼chel was asked if she ever talked to her parents about this chapter in her life. “No,” she said. She paused. But her daughter at age 21 asked her if her experiences left her ashamed of East Germany. “Unfortunately, I had to say, I am ashamed,” BÃ¼chel admitted with resignation.

Editor's note: There is no link to the film at this time. Some information can be found 

Dr Eghigian is Professor of History, Penn State University, State College, PA. He is the History of Psychiatry Editor for

The War in Their Minds: German Soldiers and Their Violent Pasts in West Germany.

 Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press; 2017.

Die Politik des Traumas: Gewalterfahrungen und psychisches Leid in den USA, in Deutschland und im Israel/PalÃ¤stina-Konflikt

3. Zajde N. Die Schoah als Paradigma des psychischen Traumas. 

The History of the Stasi: East Germany’s Secret Police, 1945-1990.

5. Maercker A, GÃ¤bler I, SchÃ¼tzwohl M. VerlÃ¤ufe von traumafolgen bei ehemaligen politisch inhaftierten der DDR: Ein 15-Jahres-follow-up [

Course of trauma sequelae in ex-political prisoners in the GDR: A 15-year follow-up study

As historians and mental health professionals both know, in the words of the writer William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The Legacy of Political Persecution

The 20th century introduced a number of new concepts to psychiatry and clinical psychology. One of the most influential has been the notion of personality. Carl Jung, Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Carl Rogers are just a few of the early figures who, starting in the 1920s, developed theories and models designed to capture the inner core of human subjectivity (or the “self,” as Rogers put it). But while their names and ideas continue to resonate, time has proven less kind to another psychological project that played out at the same time. This was characterology.

Coined in 1867 by Julius Bahnsen, a student of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, characterology was associated primarily with Germany. It is there that it began to take hold and thrive, with the founding of the field’s two major journals in the mid-1920s: 

Jahrbuch fÃ¼r Charakterologie (Yearbook for Characterology)

Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Menschenkunde (Journal for Human Studies)

Characterology emerged as a type of character analysis following along the lines of the clinical assessment of functional disorders in the 19th century. This was an assessment that involved examining a patient for outward signs indicating a psychopathology or at least a proclivity toward some pathological state of mind. The approach was beholden in no small measure to the work of the France-based psychiatrist BÃ©nÃ©dict Morel (1809-1873), whose theory of degeneration held that most mental disorders were due to corrupt hereditary constitutions and that these corruptions were reflected in observable physical stigmata and behavioral abnormalities.

 Characterology’s innovation was to extend this kind of evaluation to populations beyond those deemed “abnormal,” in order to identify those traits that drove an individual’s will and conduct.

In Germany, characterology’s star began rising in the 1920s and 1930s, when industry and the public sector began seeing the value in applied psychology. Both psychotechnics and vocational counseling were beneficiaries of this growing interest. So too was characterology, whose practitioners at the time placed less emphasis on testing and quantitative measures and more on the observation and interpretation of expressions of virtues, such as patience, independence, love of order, and calmness.

How then did characterologists propose doing this?

One way was developed by psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer (1888-1964), which he laid out in his influential book 

 in 1921. He argued that two types of constitutions-a cyclothymic and a schizothymic-are at the core of human character to varying degrees. Moreover, human beings are born with one of three basic body types: asthenic, pyknic, and athletic, and these body types are closely associated with contrasting pairs of character features. Individuals of the pyknic variety, for instance, he believed, temperamentally fluctuate between joviality and despair. Thus, if Kretschmer’s model was accurate, it was possible to read character features and predilections by simply inspecting a subject’s physique.

Psychologist Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) offered another technique: graphology. The notion that a bodily movement like handwriting could provide direct insight into the soul or character of a person was not new, having been the subject of treatises dating back to at least the 17th century. What Klages and others did by the early 20th century, however, was to tie handwriting directly to neurology, understanding the activity to be a form of expression that projected facets of a person’s inner core.

Klages’s graphology was hardly an innocuous exercise. Instead, it was bound up in the psychologist’s dark vision of the modern world. Like many of his reactionary contemporaries, Klages considered modernity to be dangerously superficial and chaotic in a way that undermined the ability of human beings (and Germans in particular) to fully realize themselves. The world therefore needed a way to differentiate between authenticity and falsehood, between genuine virtue and corrosive subterfuge. Characterology and graphology were therefore conceived as tools capable of breaking through the veneer of a person and exposing his or her true nature.

As historians Per Leo and Nitzan Lebovic have shown, Klages in particular argued for there being a natural, racial inequality separating groups of human beings, one that penetrated deep into the body and mind. Here characterology intersected with the toxic anti-Semitism of its time, holding to the view that Jews literally embodied this inequality, casting them as perpetual outsiders, but ones who disguised their true selves.

 It therefore should come as no surprise that under the Nazis characterology flourished.

It needs to be pointed out, however, that interest in character was not limited to Germany. During World War II, for instance, a number of American cultural anthropologists volunteered their services and knowledge to aid in the war effort against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan (and they would go on to continue this work during the early years of the Cold War). They engaged in what was referred to as “studies of culture at a distance,” a form of applied anthropology intended to serve the interests of the US and framed as the study of national characteristics. Japan, Germany, Russia, Britain, and Poland, all became subjects for these kinds of analyses, which were subsequently criticized for simplifying complex communities and relations.

One of the most famous anthropologists engaged in this project was Margaret Mead (1901-1978). Among her tasks was to collaborate on an initiative of the Council on Intercultural Affairs in New York City to study the “national character” of Axis powers and, later on, the assimilation of minorities in the US along with “our American character.” Publishing the results of her analysis in 1942 in the book 

, Mead argued for rejecting racist essentialisms about groups, while also insisting on the consistency of certain traits among ethnic communities: environment and upbringing, not blood, were the formative elements in national character. And while she invariably invoked an idea of “whiteness” indebted to European prejudices, she held that Americans distinguished themselves from Europeans by giving everyone in society a chance to realize their full potential, thus making the US a more adaptable society.

 That said, despite contending that Japanese-Americans were essentially American in their make-up and conduct, she and her colleagues appear to have done nothing to speak out or campaign against the forced detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

In Europe, after the war, characterologists continued their work throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. But times were changing. As West German researchers and clinicians increasingly turned to the US for inspiration, they found themselves drawn to “trait-and-factor” methods instead. The idea was no longer to uncover supposedly fixed character traits, but rather to identify the general aptitudes, adaptabilities, and interests of a person.

 As a result, a more dynamic and developmental concept of “personality” replaced “character” in academic and professional circles.

Dr Eghigian is Professor of History, Penn State University.

Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder

, c. 1848-c. 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1993.

 Meskill D. Characterological psychology and the German political economy in the Weimar period (1919-1933). 

 Stanghellini G, Broome M, Raballo A, et al. 

The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology

. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2019.

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The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of Nazi Biopolitics

 Neiburg F, Goldman M. Anthropology and politics in studies of national character. 

 Hazard Jr, AQ. Wartime anthropology, nationalism, and ‘race’ in Margaret Mead’s 

 Mabee C. Margaret Mead and behavioral scientists in World War II: problems in responsibility, truth, and effectiveness. 

 Meskill D. Psychological testing and the German labor market, 1925 to 1965. 

The 20th century introduced a number of new concepts to psychiatry and clinical psychology. One of the most influential has been the notion of personality.

Before Personality: Character Assessment and Its Troubled History

Dr Eghigian is Professor of Modern History and Former Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program at Penn State University. He is the History of Psychiatry Editor and an editorial board member of 

A year ago, I edited a collection of articles by some of the world’s leading historians of psychiatry and mental illness.

 The purpose of the collection was to take a snapshot of historical research on mental illness-an assessment of what has been accomplished, how the field is changing, and what some of the new directions for scholarship may be as we forge ahead.

To that end, it seemed important to conceive of the project broadly: consider developments from ancient times to the present, be global in scope, and gain the perspectives of researchers from throughout world. No book can claim to be exhaustive, and this one is no exception. Still, the volume provides a glimpse at some of the work going on in the history of psychiatry. So, then, here are five trends that are shaping historical research today.

1. The stigma associated with mental illness is perennial

In the 1970s and 1980s, many historians of psychiatry found inspiration in the sociology of deviance and so-called labelling theory pioneered by the likes of Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, and Thomas Scheff. This led to studies-such as Klaus DÃ¶rner’s

Madmen and the Bourgeoisie: A Social History of Insanity and Psychiatry

The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980

Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth Century England

-that explored how asylums served to isolate and discipline socially marginalized populations. The social stigma attached to mental illness appeared to trigger efforts aimed at social control.

Historians continue to find ample evidence dating back to the ancient world that the afflicted have routinely faced ridicule and scorn. That stigma, it appears now, is often superimposed on top of other ones. University of Richmond historian Manuella Meyer,

 for instance, has pointed out that research in Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico demonstrates that indigenous populations, the poor, and women there have been disproportionately labelled as mad, especially when perceived to be resisting prevailing social hierarchies.

2. Historians are taking another look at spaces and objects

Perhaps it is to be expected that historians of psychiatry would-as they have-tend to focus on clinical concepts, research methods, and doctor-patient relations. After all, these seem to have been the chief preoccupations of healers and investigators. That said, already by the 1980s and 1990s, historians were pointing out that things like asylum architecture and the use of physical restraints also had a profound impact on care. Now some historians are chronicling how a host of other material objects have played important, yet often overlooked, roles in treatment facilities.

 Gates, windows, doors, floors, gardens, clothes, beds, pills, television sets, and cigarettes: all are coming under careful scrutiny, as historical sources show each was considered to have therapeutic, sedative, disciplinary, and symbolic functions.

3. Yes, European and American psychiatry went global, but . . . 

The topic of globalization has drawn considerable attention from historians in recent years, and historians of psychiatry have been no exception. It is becoming clear that the much-cited international influence of the DSM since the 1980s

 is part of a much longer process. Already in the 19th century, psychiatric ideas, techniques, and institutions rooted in Western Europe began spreading to every continent.

This tended to happen in one of two ways. In North and South America and in East Asia, reformers interested in modernizing their societies found inspiration in European models, which they then attempted to emulate. In places like Africa and South Asia, however, colonial regimes were responsible for introducing asylums and psychiatric concepts to the region, often with disastrous consequences. That said, historians like Sally Swartz

 (University of Cape Town) and Waltraud Ernst

 (Oxford Brookes University) have been careful to point out that many of these imperialist efforts were on such a small scale and so hampered by a lack of knowledge about indigenous conditions that their influence was severely limited.

4. Any distinction drawn between biological and psychotherapeutic treatments needs to be qualified

By the 20th century, it had become common throughout the Western world to speak of there being a stark difference between psychological and somatic interventions in mental health. In more recent times, however, the results of epigenetics and research on neuroplasticity have led observers to question the notion of there being a bright line separating life experience and the body. Historians, too, are finding reason to question a clear-cut mind/body distinction, particularly when it comes to forms of treatment.

Records show that ancient, medieval, and early modern healers routinely mixed comforting conversation with dietary and hygienic instructions, often combining them with incantations, prayer, and visits to holy shrines. As historian Jonathan Sadowsky

 (Case Western Reserve University) has pointed out, most societies have treated mental illness eclectically. Ostensibly, physical treatments have always aimed at promoting spiritual or mental well-being, just as psychotherapies have been touted for having somatic effects on clients.

5. Historians remain dubious about retrospective diagnosis

While the Goldwater Rule has largely succeeded in keeping psychiatrists from publicly commenting on the mental health of prominent individuals whom they have not examined, historical figures have generally been considered fair game for evaluation. Biographers and psychoanalytically trained psycho-historians have long taken it upon themselves to assess a host of famous personalities in history, including Martin Luther, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, T.E. Lawrence, Joseph Stalin, and Emily Dickinson. Historians of psychiatry, however, generally express reservations about applying contemporary diagnostic terms to people in the past.

Ancient historians such as Chiara Thumiger

 (University of Warwick) and Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert

 (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations, Paris) point out that documents from antiquity invoking madness often were intended to serve religious, political, and legal functions and thus cannot be entirely depended on to provide clinically reliable information. At the same time, historians like Laura Hirshbein

 (University of Michigan) and Svenja Goltermann

 (University of ZÃ¼rich) have demonstrated that it is difficult to trace a direct, unbroken link connecting earlier with present-day diagnostic terms: melancholia was not the same as depression, and war neurosis and shellshock cannot be easily subsumed under the rubric of PTSD.

Dr Eghigian reports that he receives royalties for his books, one of which is mentioned in this article.

The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health. 

Madmen and the Bourgeoisie: A Social History of Insanity and Psychiatry.

The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980.

Museums of Madness: The Social Organization of Insanity in Nineteenth Century England.

An assessment of what has been accomplished, how the field is changing, and new directions for scholarship as we forge ahead into the next year.

Greg Eghigian, PhD

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