Caring and killing : : nursing and psychiatric practice in Germany, 1931-1943 / / Thomas Foth.

• Author: Foth, Thomas.
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Pflegewissenschaft und Pflegebildung ; Bd. 7; Pflegewissenschaft und Pflegebildung - Band 007
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (280 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Under the Nazi regime in Germany a calculated killing of chronic "mentally ill" patients took place. Nurses executed this program in their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were also assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. This book highlights the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life. This study analyzes patient records as "inscriptions" that actively intervene in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. It is shown how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients' identities and how these "documentary identities" led to the death of thousands of humans.

Table of Contents

Title Page; Copyright; Table of Contents; Body; Preface; Foreword; Abstract; List of tables; List of figures; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Historical Background of the Killing of Sick Persons; The Killings during the Nazi Regime; Deaths in Psychiatric Hospitals before and after National Socialism; Explanatory Approaches; "Euthanasia" as "final solution of the social question"; "Euthanasia" and a "Developmental Biopolitical Dictatorship"; Nursing Historiography; Nursing: A Powerless Occupation?; Mother House Concept; The Inner Organization of the Motherhouses

Pastoral PowerThe Diversification of Nursing; Governing Through Nursing; The Impact of Nursing under the Nazi Regime; Chapter 3: The History of the Langenhorn Asylum from 1893 to 1945; Langenhorn before the First World War; The modification of the right to complain; Entry form to annual statistics at Langenhorn; The First Wave: Killing Sick Persons through Starvation; Langenhorn Between the Wars and During the Nazi Regime; Langenhorn During the Second World War; The Role of Nurses in Selecting Patients for Transfer

Chapter 4: Anna Maria Buller's First Admission in 1931: Analysis of the RecordThe Content of the Record; The admission ritual and the nurses' reports; The Interplay between Nurses' and Psychiatrists' Notes; The text - reader conversation; The conversation between Nurses' and Psychiatrists' Notes; Chapter 5: Transfer to House 16 (March 1931); The Medical Record in House 16; The nurses' notes and the nurses' strategic position within psychiatric practice; Anna Maria Buller Becomes Dangerous and the War Against the Madness Continues; Enforcing the asylum's reality

The Record, the Script, the Dispositif, and the SubjectFixing the subject function onto Anna Maria Buller; Psychiatry interpellates Buller as subject; The moralizing dimension; Chapter 6: The Intensification of the War against the Madness: Buller's Subsequent Admissions (1932-1943); The psychiatric dispositif; Buller's First Admission to the Asylum of Langenhorn; Bare Life; Bare Life and the Camp; Critical Remarks; The Psychiatric Asylum as a Camp; Buller's forced sterilization or the psychiatrist becomes a judge; Admission 1936; Admission 1940; Shock Treatments and Psychiatric Practice

Last Transfer to LangenhornAnna Maria Buller's way into death; Horrorism; Chapter 7: Conclusion; Appendix; Appendix 1 - Drawings; Appendix 2 - Admission Photographies of Anna Maria Buller; Bibliography; Primary Sources; Secondary Sources