Psychiatry in Descent: Darwin and the Brownes Tom Walmsley Psychiatric Bulletin 1993, 17:748-751
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Psychiatry in descent: Darwin and the Brownes Tom Walmsley Psychiatric Bulletin 1993, 17:748-751. Access the most recent version at DOI: 10.1192/pb.17.12.748 References This article cites 0 articles, 0 of which you can access for free at: http://pb.rcpsych.org/content/17/12/748.citation#BIBL Reprints/ To obtain reprints or permission to reproduce material from this paper, please write permissions to [email protected] You can respond http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/eletter-submit/17/12/748 to this article at Downloaded http://pb.rcpsych.org/ on November 25, 2013 from Published by The Royal College of Psychiatrists To subscribe to The Psychiatrist go to: http://pb.rcpsych.org/site/subscriptions/ Psychiatrie Bulle!in ( 1993), 17, 748-751 Psychiatry in descent: Darwin and the Brownes TOMWALMSLEY,Consultant Psychiatrist, Knowle Hospital, Fareham PO 17 5NA Charles Darwin (1809-1882) enjoys an uneasy pos Following this confident characterisation of the ition in the history of psychiatry. In general terms, Darwinian view of insanity, it comes as a disappoint he showed a personal interest in the plight of the ment that Showalter fails to provide any quotations mentally ill and an astute empathy for psychiatric from his work; only one reference to his many publi patients. On the other hand, he has generated deroga cations in a bibliography running to 12pages; and, in tory views of insanity, especially through the writings her general index, only five references to Darwin, all of English social philosophers like Herbert Spencer of them to secondary usages. (Interestingly, the last and Samuel Butler, the Italian School of "criminal of these, on page 225, cites Darwin as part of anthropology" and French alienists including Victor R. D. Laing's "English classical education". One Magnan and Benedict Morel. can imagine how Laing would have played with this A contemporary demonstration of his ambiguous bizarre misapprehension). position is Elaine Showalter's widely praised account All of this might be forgiven were it not that of British psychiatry from 1830 to 1980 (Showalter, Darwin held careful views concerning insanity, wrote 1987). Showalter introduces the concept of "psychi much about it in his early notebooks and crowned atric Darwinism" which, she explains, lasted from his trilogy on natural selection with observations on 1870 until 1920 and is to be understood in this way: mental patients. All in all, Charles Darwin has been "Following Darwin's theories of inheritance, evo poorly served by "Showalterian rhetoric". lution and degeneration, an emerging psychiatric Darwinism viewed insanity as the product of organic defect, poor heredity and an evil environment". Janet Browne on Darwin Thus far, few clinicians would take serious issue with Showalter although some might be uneasy Janet Browne (Browne, 1985) comes to Darwin about so-called "theories of degeneration". They, altogether more squarely in her celebrated essay on after all, were the product of social thinkers rather Darwin and insanity. than Darwin himself. But then she continues: "See "Darwin is not noted for his active participation in ing the lunatic as a degenerate person of feeble will the world of medicine ... so it comes as something of and morbid predisposition, Darwinian therapists a surprise to learn that Darwin AWactively engage in took a dim view of asylum care and paternalistic one particular branch of medicine, the philosophical therapy; instead they redefined their role as that of study of the insane ... and about contemporary the psychiatric police, patrolling the boundaries theories of psychiatric diagnosis." between sanity and madness and protecting society Browne outlines Darwin's thinking which led him from dangerous infiltration by those of tainted to contact Sir James Crichton-Browne for infor stock." mation concerning the facial expressions associated Who were these "Darwinian therapists"? Where with mental illness. In the composition of The did they spell out their opposition to asylum therapy? Descent of Man, Darwin was anxious to put man How did they protect society from tainted stock? himself at the centre of the struggle for survival Probably, Showalter is thinking of Henry Maudsley; and to emphasise the principle of sexual selection. but here she is in difficulty since Maudsley actively As he reviewed the secondary sexual character promoted the return of the insane to their own com istics of mankind, Darwin turned to the question of munities. Many of the other doctors she names - like emotional expression and found a wealth of material Clouston - were asylum men unlikely to take "a dim which demanded a separate book. In this way. The view of asylum care". One is left with the impression Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals that "psychiatric Darwinism" is a careless soubri became a separate and subsequent volume in the tril quet for any psychiatric writing done in Britain from ogy of natural selection history and was published in the death of Conolly in 1866 to the outbreak of the 1872. Great War in 1914.Showalter's polemic carries on to Janet Browne shows how Darwin searched for page 109where we are introduced to "the Darwinian examples of uninhibited emotional expression in rhetoric of censure and disgust ... related to the primitive human groups, in babies and children, political anxieties of the 1870s and 1880s". (Darwin and, finally, in the insane. Darwin brought his own died in 1882). agenda to the study of insanity, seeking in Janet 748 Psychiatry in descent 749 Browne's words: "a great finishing stroke to the mentor in Robert Grant; and they were the victims of arguments put forward in The DescenÃof Man ... a scandal in March 1827. Darwin learnt a great deal intended to show that even the most 'human' charac in his short time at Edinburgh; above all, he had teristics were derived from animals... he believed the learnt the methods of observation in natural history. emotions [of the insane] were uncontrolled and The debating society for natural history was the intense and that their faces would display their Plinian Society; and its records show that Charles feelings in a pure, uncomplicated way, ideal for a Darwin was proposed for membership in 1826 by scientific study of expression." W.A.F. Browne. Sir James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938), the doc tor chosen to supply the evidence, brought a different agenda to the project. Since the 18th century, psy The Sculling of W.A.F. Browne chiatrists had sought evidence of the stigmata of lunacy in psychiatric illustration. Good examples are Widely recognised in his own lifetime (1805-1885) as provided by the work of Tardieu for Esquirol and one of the leading spokesmen for British asylum doc Gericault for Georget. The advent of photography, tors, W.A.F. Browne has only recently re-emerged Crichton-Browne argued, supplied psychiatrists with as a founding father of British psychiatry. Browne was the undergraduate President of Edinburgh's an objective source of material to furnish a full and final taxonomy of mental disorder. Royal Medical Society (1826/1828), a student of Janet Browne's essay records the failure of this Esquirol's in Paris (1830), Physician-Superintendent project. Darwin, she shows, failed to find anything in of the Crichton Royal Institution (1838-1857) and Crichton-Browne's photography except the ordinary President of the Medico-Psychological Association human expressions of suffering and despair and in 1866. However, he has only now achieved the declined to include a chapter on mental diseases in supreme accolade for the Victorian alienist: a his book. As she puts it, Darwin "completely failed posthumous critical assault from Professor Andrew to see the categories, the complex taxonomies that Scull (Scull, 1991). pervaded Crichton-Browne's corpus and under In a sense. Scull makes heavy weather of it. His pinned nineteenth century theories of madness. attempt to portray Browne as a conforming, self- Almost as if he were applying natural history con seeking man of modest means from the genteel but cepts to the mentally ill, Darwin looked for evidence financially precarious classes nearly rings true. But of'species' madness and found none ... In the same the idea that Browne chose insanity as a smart career way as he brought about the downfall of animal and move does not satisfy. Scull has nothing to say about plant classification schemes, Darwin exploded the Browne's friendship with Darwin and Robert Grant. taxonomy of insanity that lay behind almost every Almost in spite of himself, Scull ends by endorsing psychiatric endeavour of the later nineteenth Browne: "Browne's stress on social harmony and century." tranquillity; his claim to replace violent repression, One wonders what Professor Showalter would conflict and strife by moral suasion, docility and make of this. However, Janet Browne provides us willing submission to authority, even among the with a subsidiary theme of greater interest to psy depraved and unruly; his practical demonstration of chiatrists. Most of Crichton-Browne's interpret the powers of reason and morality when allied to a ations were incorporated into the book on expression new kind of moral machinery-these constituted a and furthered Darwin's arguments in a way that he potent advertisement for the merits of reformed greatly appreciated. "I have been making immense asylums run by practitioners initiated into the mys use of your manuscript" wrote Darwin. "The book teries of moral treatment and medical psychology. ought to be called by Darwin and Browne." Accepting these claims ... the Victorian governing Janet Browne seems startled by this. "Such an classes were provided with powerful incentives to embrace the lunacy reformers' schemes." extravagant compliment is, I believe, unique in Darwin's long writing career; he depended on This is, quite simply, a full and frank assessment Crichton-Browne's information and good judge of Browne's claim for a moral approach to mental ment with a commitment rarely offered to scholars illness which was claimed by many and won by few.