Historical Trauma, Colonialism, and Eugenic Legacies in Psychiatry- 11-11:30am Madness and the Repetition of Colonial Trauma in Psychiatric Services - Elan Cohen, PhD
- 11:30-12pm Neurodiversity, Neuroscience, and Our Eugenic History: A Reading and Discussion of The Devil's Castle - Susanne Antonetta, MFA
Madness and the Repetition of Colonial Trauma in Psychiatric Services - Elan Cohen, PhD
Contact with patients who embody the uninscribed residues of historical injustice can revive disavowed legacies of oppression embedded in psychiatric services. As many have noted, the institutional treatment of psychosis is directly tied to some of the cruelest aspects of our racial and colonial history. By neglecting legacies of historical trauma in search of an address, biopolitical regimes risk reproducing the conditions that necessitated psychosis in the first place. How might insights from the history of psychoanalysis challenge the pacts of silence and communities of denial that take shape in psychiatric systems? This presentation brings insights from psychoanalytic theory to a clinical example that bears witness to the repetition of historical trauma in psychiatric services. Drawing from Freud, Ferenczi, Bion, Lacan, and their followers, I advocate for attunement to enactments of historical trauma in psychiatric settings, a problem for which a combined psychoanalytic and socio-historical perspective is well-suited.
Neurodiversity, Neuroscience, and Our Eugenic History: A Reading and Discussion of The Devil's Castle - Susanne Antonetta, MFA
This session will include a reading from and discussion of my book The Devil’s Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry’s Troubled History Reverberates Today (Counterpoint, 2025). My book confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a vision for the future of mental health care, using models ranging from Philippe Pinel to Loren Mosher to lesser-known psychiatric reformers like Dorothea Buck. For this presentation, I will focus on the more contemporary aspects of my book, noting that I am myself a psychiatric survivor, diagnosed bipolar.While briefly covering the Nazi euthanasia program, I will also present, through excerpts and discussion, my original research on the mind-positive vision of neuroscience and the way methods like Nazi survivor Dorothea Buck’s “trialogue” offer new and powerful ways to treat mental distress. Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, said of The Devil’s Castle “unique in its tone and its passion, this is an arresting and deeply resonant book.” In line with the goals of ISPS, the book and my advocacy work around it offer a different, more humane, and more effective way to think about psychotic disorders. I also center, in line with Dorothea Buck, psychoanalytic conversation as key to psychiatric practice.
