Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children

Besvarliga manniskor ar mojligen ett evigt problem. Vem som ansetts som besvarlig har daremot varierat over tid. Hur omgivningen har valt att definiera och handskas med besvarligheten har varierat ...

De samhällsbesvärliga : Förhandlingar om psykopati och kverulans i 1930- och 40-talens Sverige

Att söka samhället : En inledning

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of schoolchildren in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration has so far been largely unexplored when it comes to the Scandinavian case. In line with Michel Foucault, the article regards these professional efforts as part of the biopolitics, where psychiatry amongst other disciplines engaged in the development of means to involve strategically in the life of schoolchildren and their families, as part of shaping the future of the population. We argue that psychiatric sorting activities related to schoolchildren did not solely take place through IQ-testing in schools, but involved classification of children through a range of measures in various settings. We further argue that these processes took place due to local agents and initiatives in a broader context of interprofessional collaborations between psychiatrists, psychologists, and teachers, rather than top–down processes initiated by the state. The analysis in the article draws on different sources of the period: journals, articles, and monographs from the key-agents of the period

Psychiatry in the sorting of schoolchildren in Scandinavia 1920–1950: IQ testing, child guidance clinics, and hospitalisation

Around the year 1900, there was an emerging scientific interest in man and human behaviour. Among other things, this interest involved a concern about the quality of the population, especially regarding children. A whole scientific movement, the Child Study Movement, emerged in both the Uni­ted States and Europe, revolving around this interest in children. Different experts were united in their concern about the state of the population of children and developed a variety of models and methods to improve the characteristics and health of children. One category concerned the experts in particular: the misbehaved. 
Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on biopower, this article explores how psychiatry played an important role in sorting and categorizing schoolchildren in the early welfare state during the interwar years. Society demanded new ways of controlling the population, and biopower – which is about administering the population and maximizing vitality – became a central element of this governing. This article is a contribution to the history of biopower, and this topic is discussed with the emergence and establish­ment of child and school psychiatry during 1910–1955 serving as an example. 
In this article, it is argued that the involvement of psychiatrists occurred in three steps: as a part of creating and defining new categories of “problem children” within the school system, due to influence from the mental health movement with the establishment of advisory clinics and, finally, through hospitalization and specialization in the 1940s.

De svåruppfostrade barnen: Skolpsykiatrins framväxt och etablering i Sverige 1910–1955

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De svåruppfostrade barnen: Skolpsykiatrins framväxt och etablering i Sverige 1910–1955