Date
4-2025
Project Type
URC Presentation
Department
History
College or School
COLA
Class Year
Senior
Major
History
Journal Title
Inquiry
Faculty Research Advisor
Elizabeth Mellyn
Abstract
The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) allows students to pursue original, independent research in close collaboration with a faculty mentor. The subject Claire investigated was the experience of women institutionalized for mental illness in nineteenth-century America, as recorded in their own words. Having first encountered these narratives in a seminar on the history of madness and mental institutions, Claire initially set out to study autobiographical accounts written by women who were institutionalized involuntarily, often by male relatives. These narratives, long overlooked in the historiography, have typically been read as evidence of patriarchal control and the misuse of psychiatric power. However, as Claire expanded her research, she discovered a parallel set of narratives written by women who voluntarily sought treatment for mental illness. Unlike the involuntary accounts, these narratives offered a more complex reflection on how mental illness was experienced, understood, and interpreted within nineteenth-century social and medical culture. Using this shift as her research focus, Claire analyzed these narratives through the lens of medical anthropology to explore how women’s self-reported experiences challenged the psychiatric thinking of the time. Her project reveals that these accounts were not only personal testimonies but also powerful critiques of the gendered assumptions embedded in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment.
Recommended Citation
Paley, Claire, "The Female Patient and the Male Doctor: Gender, Power, and Psychiatry in 19th-Century America" (2025). Inquiry. 621.
https://scholars.unh.edu/urc/621