Alterity and Disorder in Psychiatry and Literature since the 1970s

“20世纪70年代以来精神病学与文学中的另类与紊乱”项目从认识论、文学研究和医学史的角度考察了20世纪70年代以来精神病学与文学关系中的相互交流、共同问题、误解和扭曲。这一时期的特点是对精神病理学概念和现有分类系统的批评浪潮，并导致在西德引入了国际标准化诊断手册，随后实施了障碍概念，取代了以前的疾病类别。该项目调查了这些认知上的变化是如何与精神病学话语中的自我反思以及文学中表现精神另类和精神障碍的新方式沟通的。自20世纪70年代以来，文学不再是精神病学反话语和反精神病学批评形式的首选场所。相反，文学写作开始探索新的策略，以揭露和定位有精神病史的人的另类。与此同时，民族精神病学的国际讨论也来到了西德。对民族精神病学概念的接受和对精神另类人种志的首次接触，与精神病学和开放精神病学（至少部分地和在元理论讨论中）正在进行的认知变化产生了共鸣，以表达类似于在新写作形式中探索的另类。我们的项目将文学研究和医学史结合起来，对现代文学、精神病学和民族精神病学的接受之间的交流和交叉进行比较调查。因此，该项目考察了那些表达和反思精神差异的地方；它的目标是一个动荡地带的历史认识论，其特征是疾病实体变得脆弱和可疑。基于对文本和来源的共享语料库的分析，该项目旨在在精神病学知识与疾病单位的联系被切断后形成和稳定精神病学知识的历史认识论。

The project “Alterity and Disorder in Psychiatry and Literature since the 1970s”investigates the mutual exchanges, shared problems, misunderstandings and distortions in the relationship between psychiatry and literature since the 1970s from the perspectives of epistemology, literary studies and history of medicine. This period was marked by a wave of criticism of psychopathological concepts and of the existing classification systems and it led to the introduction of the international, standardized diagnostic manuals in West-Germany, with the subsequent implementation of the concept of disorder, replacing the former category of disease. The project investigates how these epistemic changes communicated both with the self-reflection in the psychiatric discourse and with new ways of representing mental alterity and psychiatric disorders in literature. Since the 1970s, literature did no longer function as preferred place for a counter-discourse on psychiatry and the forms of criticism applied by anti-psychiatry. Instead, literary writing started to explore new strategies for exposing and positioning the alterity of people with psychiatric experiences. At the same time, the international discourse of ethno-psychiatry arrived in West-Germany. The reception of ethno-psychiatric concepts and the first encounters with the ethnography of mental alterity resonated with the ongoing epistemic changes within psychiatry and opened psychiatry – at least partially and in meta-theoretical discussions – to expressions of alterity similar to those explored in the new forms of writing. Our project combines literary studies and history of medicine for a comparative investigation of the exchanges and crossovers between modern literature, psychiatry and the reception of ethno-psychiatry. The project thus examines places where experiences with mental alterity were articulated and reflected upon; it aims at a historical epistemology of a zone of unrest whose characteristic feature was that disease entities had become fragile and doubtful. Based on the analysis of a shared corpus of texts and sources the project aims at a historical epistemology of the shaping and stabilizing of psychiatry knowledge after its connection with disease units has been cut.