Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness

Drawing on a rich set of asylum patient case-records, this book reconstructs the encounters of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness and deviancy during a transitional period in the history of both Germany and psychiatry. Focusing on religious madness, nymphomania, masturbatory insanity, and Jewishness, this study probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted within the settings of family, village, and insane asylum. Goldberg's careful examination sheds light on a range of issues concerning gender, sexuality, religious politics, class relations, state-building, and antisemitism.