VIRUS Band 17, pp. 231-239, 2020/07/21
Schwerpunkt: Medikalisierte Kindheiten
Die neue Sorge um
das Kind vom ausgehenden 19. bis ins späte 20. Jahrhundert
At the turn of the twentieth century, more and more school children were considered mentally “abnormal” by pedagogues and psychiatrists. “Psychopathic inferiorities” (Psychopathische Minderwertigkeiten) quickly turned into a fashionable diagnosis. This article deals with the concept of psychopathy, which developed around 1900 in the context of pedagogy and psychiatry, and reconstructs the psychopathologization of school children by pedagogy and psychiatryin Germany. Based on selected case studies, the paper compares their ideas of the so called psychopathic child. By analysing the functions of the discourse about the “psychopathic” child, the author explains the significant success of the diagnosis “psychopathy”.
Keywords: Psychopathy, psychopathologization of school children, boundary dispute between psychiatry and pedagogy, Imperial Germany
