Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2009
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Back row, from left to right, are Jennifer Bazar (Tait), Kelli Vaughn-Blount (Anderson), Laura Ball (Paternoster), and in the front, Lisa Held (Putnam).
“Lusty Ladies or Victorian Victims?”
At a standing-room-only event during the 117th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA) in Toronto this past August, audiences were treated to the extremely rare, and probably unprecedented, group appearance of Dr. Lawson Tait, Dr. James Jackson Putnam, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Mr. Richard Paternoster. The occasion: an early 21st century re-enactment of a late 19th-century conference to discuss a troubling case of nymphomania. The event was particularly unusual because all of the presenters have been dead for at least 90 years. Bringing them, and their views on women, madness, and sexuality to life were Jennifer Bazar, Lisa Held, Kelli Vaughn-Blount, and Laura Ball, four doctoral students in the History and Theory of Psychology graduate program at York University in Toronto.
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Jobs, Conferences, Grants
Bazar, Held, Vaughn-Blount and Ball began to conceptualize their dramatic re-enactment in the fall of 2008, during a graduate reading course on the history of women and the asylum directed by Alexandra Rutherford. The course readings, which focused on the links between gender, insanity, and sexuality in the mid-to-late 19th century, prompted them to consider multiple historiographic issues, including a close evaluation of whose agendas and perspectives were represented in both primary and secondary readings. With their intellectual curiosity piqued, and their creative juices flowing, the students came up with an idea for a course assignment.
The resulting script, entitled “Lusty Ladies or Victorian Victims: Perspectives on Women, Madness, and Sexuality,” was based entirely on segments taken from 19th century American and British primary source materials. Represented were the perspectives of Lawson Tait (Bazar), a women’s surgeon and gynecologist who pioneered the ovariotomy as a treatment for women’s mental distress; James Jackson Putnam (Held), a neurologist and one of the most distinguished nervous disease specialists in the United States; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (Vaughn-Blount), a female physician, surgeon, and suffragette, and the first female physician licensed and listed on the British Medical Register; and Richard Paternoster (Ball), a barrister, former asylum patient, and co-founder of Britain’s Alleged Lunatics’ Friends Society, one of the first patients’ rights groups. The combative, yet respectful, dialogue, augmented by period-appropriate costumes, vividly presented the audience with the characters’ perspectives on the social and medical treatment of women’s insanity, sexual surgeries, patient voices, the social construction of gender, neurological theories, and patient rights.
A spirited panel discussion followed the 30-minute re-enactment, with audience members posing questions to the presenters. The four students responded to questions from their character’s perspective, using their knowledge from the course and their own areas of historical research. Questions included: How was female insanity defined (or who defined female insanity and to serve what aims)? Were women truly victims, as many 1970s feminist historians have suggested, and if not, how did they express their agency? How did gender affect the diagnoses and treatments selected by female physicians, compared to their male counterparts? For what other reasons, besides insanity, were women committed to the asylum? Where can patient voices be heard in this history, and what can they tell us? Are there “villains” in this history, and should we even look for them?
The Society for the History of Psychology (SHP), Division 26 of the APA, acknowledged the presentation with their Best Student Paper Award for this year’s program. SHP’s Student Awards Committee described the performance and subsequent discussion as “innovative and original.” And by the way, they all got As in the course!
– by Alexandra Rutherford