Revisiting mental hygiene: Josef Lundahl’s interpretation of modern psychiatry in Sweden at the beginning of the twentieth century

Abstract

The concept of mental hygiene is historically intertwined with eugenics and what it meant both ideologically and for the care of the mentally ill. A closer investigation of the concept and of the historical context shows that different interpretations existed simultaneously. The aim of this essay is to highlight the literary and scientific works of a Swedish psychiatrist, Josef Lundahl, an advocate of the mental hygiene concept. A close reading of his texts is used to provide an example of how the concept of mental hygiene was understood by a psychiatrist and practitioner of mental hygiene. The practice of child-care and out-patient care that Lundahl founded in Visby is far from what we now associate with mental hygiene in the past.