| The dissertation is a study of a lost form of sensibility, Gemutlichkeit, which flourished in 19th century Germany and was, by all accounts, felt most acutely in the Biedermeier period. This sensibility was generated by the operations of the Gemuth, a "soul-organ" taken by those who believed in its influence to be both mental and physical as well as individual and collective. The conceptual and phenomenal framework which structured experiences of Gemuth is unearthed from the history of psychiatric practice in the southern German asylum Illenau during the period 1842-1889. This institution furnishes a vivid demonstration of that framework because its practitioners held mental illnesses to be, literally "illnesses of the Gemuth" (Gemuthskrankheiten). Consequently, they geared their treatment methods towards observing, regulating, and cajoling the afflicted organ.;At Illenau the medication to be administered to patients was experience itself and the asylum was arranged around a pharmacology of experience in which every ward constituted a separate world. The physician's task was to move patients between wards according to their shifting psychiatric needs, a skill that depended most crucially on timing (Takt). Much of the thesis is devoted to reconstructing the phenomenology of asylum life from the organization of space, through its landscape and architecture, and of time, through the use of music and gymnastics. The relationship between Gemuth and sexuality is explored with respect to Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1877), a text informed by, yet at odds with, the culture of Gemuth at Illenau where its author trained for five years, 1864-1869.;The research for this study is based on medical publications by Illenau physicians and other members of staff, such as asylum chaplains, music instructors and gymnastics teachers, on an asylum journal called the Illenau Weekly (1867-1896) and on the Illenau patient records. |
