Watson W
Woodsworth College, The University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Hist Psychiatry. 1998 Sep;9(35):355-81. doi: 10.1177/0957154X9800903505.
A number of essays published in History of Psychiatry are examined which concern the general character of the historiography of psychiatry, and the professional relations between psychiatrist-historians and professional historians. An alternative is offered to the various positions advanced in these essays in which psychiatry is understood as a craft. This conception draws attention to ways in which psychiatric theory is acquired through clinical experience rather than text-based formal education. It is suggested that this creates difficulties of interpretation for the historian of psychiatry, but that these difficulties can be inappropriately exploited by critical historians, who rely on the ambiguity of psychiatric terms to argue that psychiatry has historically been a primarily normative and political enterprise, or at least an intellectually weak and professionally greedy one. A more tentative approach to the interpretation of textual sources from the history of psychiatry is suggested. This approach may lead to a less adversarial relationship between psychiatrist-historians and critical professional historians of psychiatry.
本文考察了发表于《精神病学史》上的若干篇论文，这些论文涉及精神病学史编纂学的总体特征，以及精神病学历史学家与专业历史学家之间的职业关系。针对这些论文中提出的各种将精神病学理解为一门技艺的观点，本文提供了另一种选择。这一概念提请人们注意，精神病学理论是通过临床经验而非基于文本的正规教育获得的方式。有人认为，这给精神病学历史学家带来了解释上的困难，但批判历史学家可能会不适当地利用这些困难，他们依靠精神病学术语的模糊性来论证，精神病学在历史上主要是一项规范性和政治性的事业，或者至少是一项智力薄弱且专业贪婪的事业。本文提出了一种对精神病学史文本资料进行解释的更试探性的方法。这种方法可能会减少精神病学历史学家与批判的精神病学专业历史学家之间的对抗关系。
