Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness

Drawing upon a rich set of asylum patient case records, this book reconstructs the encounter of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness and deviancy at a transitional period in German and psychiatry history. Focusing on religious madness, nymphomania, masturbatory insanity, and Jewishness, this study probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted in 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 anti-Semitism.

Ann Goldberg is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside.