Our archive provides information on the life and work of historical figures in the field of psychiatry.
We present 155 short biographies of professionals, users of psychiatry and their relatives. With a collection of historical testimonies from users and survivors of psychiatry and a bibliography, we document the individual experience of madness and hospitalisation. BIAPSY offers an inclusive and participatory access to the history of madness and psychiatry.
“The basis for an empirical science, which psychiatry wants to be and must be, can only be the experiences of patients, can only be our experiences with psychosis.”
Dorothea Buck
Women in the history of psychiatry
The history of psychiatry has often discussed women only in the roles of patients or caregivers, that is, in roles that are in line with bourgeois gender norms. As patients, women have faced constructions of allegedly specifically “female” disorders. In Germany, the first woman ever to head a psychiatric clinic (M. Rave-Schwank) was appointed in 1990, and the first woman to hold a chair in psychiatry (I. Heuser) followed only in 2001. BIAPSY documents the stories of women who experienced psychiatry as patients but also of female professionals who expanded traditional role models and initiated reforms.
Users and survivors of psychiatry and their stories
The perspectives of people who have experienced psychiatric treatment and institutions are indispensable for a participatory and inclusive understanding of the history of psychiatry. Their life stories are a testimony to personal crises and how they overcame them, but also often to exclusion, institutional violence and stigmatisation.
Go to archivePersonal narratives
Testimonies convey personal experiences more directly than any other type of text. Such autobiographies, letters and diaries are important sources for the history of madness. BIAPSY collects these texts, supplements them with a bibliography and makes them available for download.
Go to personal narrativesArtists and creatives
Today, art from psychiatry is categorised as art brut or outsider art and exhibited in special museums (e.g. in Heidelberg or Lausanne). BIAPSY documents some of the life stories of artists from this context.
Go to archiveThe path of psychoanalysis
Since the beginning of the 20th century, psychoanalysis has fundamentally changed our understanding of the human psyche. BIAPSY focuses in particular on individuals who have involved themselves in the therapy of psychoses
Go to archiveThe BIAPSY project
The Biographical Archive of Psychiatry was founded at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in 2015.
We operate a biographical database and collect historical narratives of users and survivors of psychiatry. Our aim is to promote participatory and inclusive research into the history of madness and psychiatry. The authors of our contributions usually come from the fields of history or psychosocial professions, some of them with their own experience of psychiatry.
Would you like to suggest a biography for our archive or write one yourself? Please contact us!