Dual dependency: Conceptualisations of depression in Polish psychiatry between east and west

Abstract

Contrary to the argument that biological conceptualisations of mental distress serve as a smokescreen for the ills of capitalism in Western neoliberal societies, the findings show that the biological and individualised definitions of depression were present in the socialist Eastern Bloc. Taking the history of Polish psychiatry as a vantage point, this study introduces its historical development throughout late socialism and into the capitalist regime, revealing the continuity of biological conceptualisations of depression over time. It draws from archival research of the Polish Psychiatry journal, supplemented by interviews with psychiatrists from different generations. The study complicates the history of the European psychiatry during the Cold War period, by tracking knowledge transfers between East and West. It proves that the understanding of depression in late socialist Poland as an endogenous disease, an organic disorder independent of the social environment, was partly shaped by the Pavlovian paradigm and partly by Western neurobiological discoveries. Since the 1990s, with the dominance of American science, conceptualisations of depression as an endogenous disease have prevailed, albeit under a new wording of biological vulnerability. The study argues that the simultaneous impact of the Soviet and Western psychiatry in late socialist Poland was an instance of dual dependency resulting from the country’s geopolitical positioning. With the systemic transformation in the 1990s, a shift in the dependency pattern occurred, as Polish psychiatry clearly oriented towards the U.S. science.