Women and melancholy in nineteenth-century German psychiatry

Abstract

This study examines depictions of the relationship between women and melancholia in German psychiatric textbooks published between 1803 and 1913. Focusing in particular on how these texts present the female life cycle, nineteenth-century views about female ‘nature’ and gender traits, and women’s familial and professional roles, it reveals how nineteenth-century psychiatrists were caught between the scientific demand for objective clinical observation and the gender norms of the culture to which they belonged. On the one hand, psychiatrists carefully and sensitively describe female melancholia with evidence obtained through the scientific methods of clinical observation, anatomical investigation and self-questioning. On the other hand, language choice contributes to the naturalization of gender difference by assigning cultural meaning to clinical observations.