IHPST Presentations at the CSHPS (Montreal)

June 19, 11-12:30

Organized Session: Psychiatry and Psychology Beyond the Clinic - Matthew McLaughlin (University of Toronto), Rachel Katz (University of Toronto) and Owen Chevalier (Western University)

Room: MDHAR G-01

Abstract:

This session offers an interdisciplinary examination of patient expectations, perspectives, and involvement in psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis. The presentations interrogate the professionalization of the mind sciences, the function of therapeutic interventions, and the impact of technology in expanding the jurisdiction of psy-authority beyond the clinic. Through historical and philosophical analyses, they examine how understandings of professional expertise, perceived benefits of therapeutic interventions, and new technologies impact how people engage with and understand the purpose and objective of the mind sciences. These presentations recover, center, and reflect on the perspective of the patient and consumer. Such a standpoint offers insight into psychiatric, psychological, and psychoanalytic authority and reveals that engaging with, challenging, and adapting to psy-authority impacts how people understand themselves and their relationships with others.

Rachel Katz, “Putting the “I” in improvement: Personal responsibility and psychotherapeutic outcomes”

Abstract:

Do we have a responsibility to “get better”? Much of the information shared with the general public about psychotherapy suggests that therapy is a tool for self-improvement, but this view constrains the possible goals of psychotherapy. In this presentation I will interrogate whether patients pursuing psychotherapy are obliged to use that therapeutic experience for the purpose of self-improvement. I will first draw on the recent history of psychotherapy to give context for the growth of the trend of advertising therapy as self-improvement. I will then begin a philosophical exploration of what it means to strive for self-improvement and argue that this can constrain the range of outcomes a patient can expect from psychotherapy. I will argue that reducing therapy to self- improvement not only minimizes the potential benefits of psychotherapy but also forces patients to live within a narrow set of lifestyle parameters. I will also argue that the view of therapy as self-improvement implies that therapeutic experiences may contribute to making a patient a “better” person.

These arguments will build towards my main question of whether patients ought to use the tools learned in psychotherapy towards the various aims of self-improvement. Do patients owe this kind of growth to themselves or their communities? If patients do not wish to live within the normative lifestyle parameters often prescribed by psychotherapy, are they committing some kind of moral wrongdoing? This talk will explore possible answers to these questions and highlight the shortcomings of equating psychotherapy with normative visions of self-improvement.

June 20, 11-12:30

Session: Canadian Science in Practice

Room: MDHAR G-10

Reading Galvanometers: Infrastructure and Instrumental Practice of Electrical Metrology at the University of Toronto

Authors:

Chen-Pang Yeang (University of Toronto), Erich Weidenhammer (University of Toronto), Victoria Fisher (University of Toronto), Ava Spurr (University of Toronto) and Patrick Finnigan (independent scholar).

Speakers at CSHPS: Victoria Fisher (University of Toronto), Ava Spurr (University of Toronto)

Abstract:

Historians of science and technology have explored scientific instruments for their implications to metrology, the concepts of precision, materiality of laboratories, pedagogy, and tacit knowledge. We use the galvanometers as a lens to study the local development of expertise and training in electrical science and technology. Galvanometers were known for their precision in measuring minute electric currents. Integral to industry and science from the mid-19th to the 20th century, these instruments gained prominence as fundamental tools in electrical metrology. Their significance and operational challenges required specialized training in physics and electrical engineering.

In this paper, we inspect a set of historical galvanometers and the teaching of their uses at the University of Toronto. We adopt two materially-oriented methodologies. The first, informed by the Winterthur method of “artifact reading,” examines four historical galvanometers from the University of Toronto Scientific Instruments Collection to trace the development of local metrology and its broader Canadian context. The second, guided by experimental replication and a close reading of curricula and students’ lab notebooks from the University of Toronto Archives, aims to reconstruct the pedagogical practice and embodied skills involving galvanometers. Our study showcases the fruitfulness of materially-engaged methodologies in investigating the laboratory practice, teaching, and material conditions surrounding a ubiquitous measuring instrument at a Canadian university in the 20th century.

Friday, June 21, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Marga Vicedo, The Rise of Emotions in US Child Psychiatry, 1920-1940

Room: MDHAR G-10

Abstract:

This presentation examines the rise to prominence of the emotions in early child psychiatry in the United States. It argues that a key element in this important historical event lies in psychiatry’s struggles for relevance and redefinition vis-à-vis psychology and pediatrics during the 1920s. The emotions allowed psychiatrists to circumvent and minimize the expertise that psychologists had gained over children’s minds by demonstrating the role of intelligence in understanding behavior disorders. In the early 1930s, psychiatrists emphasized their role as medically trained experts. In contrast with psychoanalysts who had found a niche in the child guidance clinics, psychiatrists such as Louis Lurie and Leo Kanner realigned themselves with the medical profession by forging an alliance with pediatricians. Child psychiatry emerged as a medical subdiscipline, an event marked by Leo Kanner’s 1935 publication of Child Psychiatry, the first American manual of children’s mental ailments.

Friday, June 21, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Mark Solovey, Closing the “Domestic Intelligence Gap”: US Senator Walter Mondale's Proposal for a National Council of Social Advisers and the “Uneasy Partnership” between Social Science and the Federal Government.

Room: MDHAR G-01

Abstract:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, U.S. Senator Walter F. Mondale (D-Minnesota) introduced legislation to establish a national Council of Social Advisers (CSA) led by three members, presumably social scientists, and located in the executive office of the federal government. The proposed council would gather data on social conditions, analyze social trends, and assess the effectiveness of government programs designed to address social

problems. The council would also advise the president and help prepare an annual social report of the nation, which the president would present to congress for discussion. By doing these things, the social science council would - Mondale hoped - help the government to clarify, promote, and achieve major social goals, with equal opportunity for all Americans at the top of the list. Twice, in 1970 and 1972, bills including the proposed social science council were approved by a Senate subcommittee chaired by Mondale, its parent committee, and finally by the full Senate. But companion bills in the House of Representatives never made much headway. And after 1973 Mondale himself stopped pursuing this initiative, after which point political and scholarly discussion dwindled precipitously. Mirroring that dwindling of attention, Mondale’s effort has received marginal attention in historical studies. Though the literature on federal policy, liberal reform, and the social sciences is immense, it too has had relatively little to say about Mondale's initiative.

In this paper I advance two main claims. First, I propose that far from being marginal to Mondale's career, the CSA initiative emerged from his deep commitment to a robust agenda for liberal reform, which linked his family upbringing and early involvement with progressive politics to his work as a U.S. Senator in support of the Great Society both during and after the Johnson presidency. As his efforts to promote the CSA initiative during the late 1960s and early 1970s reveal, despite mounting criticism of liberal reforms and worries about the role of the social sciences from many directions, Mondale remained convinced that addressing pressing domestic problems effectively required strong federal leadership as well as more robust institutional arrangements and analytic tools centered on the social sciences. Second, though his effort came to naught, and despite the rather limited attention it has received, his CSA initiative stands out as the single most ambitious effort in the second half of the 20th century to elevate the visibility and policy significance of the social sciences at the highest levels of American government. As a corollary, the evolution and ultimate demise of Mondale’s initiative is an important piece of a much larger story about the waning power of a liberal reformist agenda that insisted on a key role for the social sciences in service of an activist, well-informed, and socially progressive state.