ioctoral Dissertation Research: Mental Hygiene and the Psychiatry of Adjustment, 1908-1948

美国精神卫生运动是进步时代的一场改革派运动，寻求发展和应用精神病学、心理学和社会工作来缓解现代性问题。其倡导者将心理健康定义为个人对社会环境的适应。根据它的观点，社会问题可以通过增加个人的适应技能或通过社会工程来解决。在这篇博士论文中，研究人员调查了这些观念、专业干预策略和实践以及关于什么是心理健康的文化观念之间的相互作用。精神卫生运动的制度基础是成立于1909年的国家精神卫生委员会。NCMH协调专业活动，与大型慈善机构保持联系以组织资金，并在专业和整个社会中传播其观点。NCMH的利益从关注精神疾病转向预防；然后扩大预防范围，将社会适应不良包括在内；最后，促进适应或心理健康。这些精神健康的理想既反映了男子气概、公民身份和正常的文化理想，又通过以中立的科学语言呈现和通过其发展的专业实践加强了这些理想。M

The American mental hygiene movement was a reformist movement characteristic of the Progressive Era that sought to develop and apply psychiatry, psychology, and social work to alleviate the problems of modernity. Its advocates defined mental health as the individual's adjustment to the social environment. According to its perspective, social problems could be solved either by increasing the adaptive skills of individuals or through social engineering. In this Ph.D. dissertation, the researcher investigates the interaction between these ideas, professional intervention strategies and practices, and cultural ideas about what constitutes mental health. The institutional basis for the mental hygiene movement was the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which was founded in 1909. The NCMH coordinated professional activities, maintained connections with large philanthropies to organize funding, and disseminated its perspective within the professions and society at large. The interests of the NCMH moved from a concern with mental illness to its prevention; then the broadening of the scope of prevention to include social maladjustment; and finally, the promotion of adjustment or mental health. These ideals of mental health both reflected cultural ideals of masculinity, citizenship, and normality, and reinforced them by their presentation in the neutral language of science and through the professional practices it developed. M