Seminar series: Heritage of psychiatry

Today, major psychiatric institutions are being dismantled or replaced with residential areas, schools, spa facilities and business parks. The dismantling can be seen as a striving to creat a distance from abuse and opression that have existed in the history of psychiatry. Emphasizing oppressive historical practices might however also contribute to the occlusion of ongoing injustice. Moreover, when buildings are demolished and renovated, the experiences and narratives from patients and staff members are difficult to preserve and present. But even difficult experiences can be important to preserve; patients can experience it as essential to bear testimony, to give their views and to criticize.

In this seminar series, we want to raise questions about who's stories and whose cultural heritage that are perceived as important to preserve? How can we support patients' stories and experiences to be heard? We also wish to establish studies of psychiatric heritage as a separate field of research. As part of this, we arrange seminars that all address these issues in different ways. During autumn 2018, the following three semeinars will take place. The seminars will be in Swedish.

There is no fee and the seminars are open to anyone who is intersted Please contact elisabeth.punzi@psy.gu.se or frida.wikstrom@gu.se and let us know if you want to participate.

Tuesday 9 October at 14.15-16.00, 
Department of Psychology, Haraldsgatan 1, room G6.
Theory and practice in treatment methods in France and Sweden. Between culture, phenomenology, positivism, psychoanalysis and KBT
Jonathan Benelbaz, Psychologist and Doctor of Psychology, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité.

Friday 23 November, 10.15-12.00
Department of Historical Studies, Eklandagatan 86, hall 1102
Disapproved psychiatric hospitals and complex cultural heritage - strategies, norms and functionality
Hedvig Mårdh, art scientist and Cecilia Rodéhn, researcher in museums and cultural sciences, Uppsala University

Monday 10 December, 13.15-15.00
Department of Historical Studies, Eklandagatan 86, hall 2303A
New therapeutic environments and environmental therapeutic trials in the 1970s.
Frida Wikström, historian at the Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg.