Remembering Psychiatry’s Past

Abstract

This article explores the historical meanings of a collection of psychiatric objects on display at the Porirua Hospital Museum, at Porirua, near Wellington, in New Zealand. Founded in 1987 to celebrate the original asylum’s centenary, the museum commemorates the history of the institution. Its curators are former psychiatric nursing staff. Visitors to the museum include educators, researchers and members of the psychiatric community. This article asks why some people have preserved the ‘relics’ of past psychiatry. Such collections and museum exhibitions raise fascinating questions about the 20th-century experience of psychiatric institutions, and the role of the museum collection in people’s lives. In talking about why and how former staff have struggled to preserve their private memories through collections of physical objects, and by interpreting history inside the space of the museum, the article suggests that historians can make a new contribution to the understandings of psychiatric institutions in histories of 20th-century psychiatry.