Warning: file_get_contents(https://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&id=26651189
&cmd=llinks): Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
in C:\Inetpub\vhosts\kidney.de\httpdocs\pget.php on line 215
Constructing Patient Stories: Dynamic Case Notes and Clinical Encounters at
Glasgow s Gartnavel Mental Hospital, 1921-32
#MMPMID26651189
Morrison H
Med Hist
2016[Jan]; 60
(1
): 67-86
PMID26651189
show ga
This article contextualises the production of patient records at Glasgow's
Gartnavel Mental Hospital between 1921 and 1932. Following his appointment as
asylum superintendent in 1921, psychiatrist David Kennedy Henderson sought to
introduce a so-called dynamic approach to mental health care. He did so,
primarily, by encouraging patients to reveal their inner lives through their own
language and own understanding of their illness. To this effect, Henderson
implemented several techniques devised to gather as much information as possible
about patients. He notably established routine 'staff meetings' in which a
psychiatrist directed questions towards a patient while a stenographer recorded
word-for-word the conversation that passed between the two parties. As a result,
the records compiled at Gartnavel under Henderson's guidance offer a unique
window into the various strategies deployed by patients, but also allow
physicians and hospital staff to negotiate their place amidst these clinical
encounters. In this paper, I analyse the production of patient narratives in
these materials. The article begins with Henderson's articulation of his
'dynamic' psychotherapeutic method, before proceeding to an in-depth hermeneutic
investigation into samples of Gartnavel's case notes and staff meeting
transcripts. In the process, patient-psychiatrist relationships are revealed to
be mutually dependent and interrelated subjects of historical enquiry rather than
as distinct entities. This study highlights the multi-vocal nature of the
construction of stories 'from below' and interrogates their subsequent
appropriation by historians.
free
free
free
