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Men, Women and Madness in Twentieth-Century Britain

Module description

Our modern-day ideas about madness tend to conjure up images of the ‘madwoman’: hysterical, prone to irrationality and over-emotional behaviour.  However, our associations with gender and mental illness have a long history, and men also feature prominently in this story.  On this module you will trace the ways in which our ideas about mental illness have developed since the late nineteenth-century and will explore a range of cultural and social factors that have led to misleading and stigmatising assumptions about gender and psychological disorders.  You will engage with, and think critically about, a variety of documentary, statistical, visual and oral sources used in the history of medicine and psychiatry.  There are no pre- or co-requisite skills for this module.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aim of this module is to:

• Introduce you to gender as a concept in the history of medicine. With a focus on psychiatric disorders in twentieth-century Britain
• Explore the social, cultural and political forces that have resulted in gendered understandings of mental illness
• Engage with, and think critically about, a variety of documentary, statistical, visual and oral sources used in the history of medicine

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Evaluate the significance of gender in the history of mental illness
• 2. Critically consider the cultural forces that shape understandings of disease
• 3. Assess a range of sources used in the history of medicine

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Identify the problems of using historical sources, e.g. bias, reliability, etc., and to compare the validity of different types of source

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Answer a question briefly and concisely
• 6. Effectively present work orally, including the ability to respond to questions orally, and to think quickly of questions to ask other students
• 7. Work independently and within a group, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 8. Digest, select and organise primary source material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 9. Work with others in a team and to interact effectively with the tutor and the wider group
• 10. Write to a very tight word-length

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• An introductory session on gender and medical history
• Exploring psychiatric disorders prior to World War Two and the coming of the NHS
• Hysteria: photographic evidence
• Neurasthenia: captioned film War Neuroses (1918)
• Suburban Neuroses: contemporary medical journals
• Exploring the advancing medicalisation of emotional distress from the 1950s' anxiety disorders and depressive states and their treatment
• Gender representation in statistical sources
• Classic feminist texts
• Contemporary medical texts
• Sources from the pharmaceutical industry
• Articles in the women's periodical press
• Oral history
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: newspapers

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Stuart Anderson (ed.), Making Medicines: A Brief History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals (London, The Pharmaceutical Press, 2005)
• John C Burnham, What is Medical History? (Oxford, Polity, 2005).
• Joan Busfield, Men, Women and Madness (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1996).
• Anne Digby, Gender, Health and Welfare (London, Routledge, 1996).
• Helen Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (London; New York, Longman, 1994).
• Ludmilla Jordanova, 'The social construction of medical knowledge', Social History of Medicine (1995), 361-81.
• Mark S Micale and Roy Porter (eds), Discovering the History of Psychiatry (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Dorothy Porter, 'The mission of the social history of medicine: an historical view', Social History of Medicine (1995), 345-59.
• Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry (New York, John Wiley, 1997).
• Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (London, Picador, 1997).
• Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 (London, Virago, [1987], 2001).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1153

Key words search

Women, madness, history of medicine, psychiatry