Abstract
This chapter takes up the question of the patient case record and its uses by historians. It opens a window into the world of ‘closed’ psychiatric institutions of the past through the prism of the archive, and the stories inside patient cases. In doing so, the chapter seeks to show how we might decolonise the writing of this history. By encountering the archive, the historian also makes an intervention to it; historians are now exploring the divide between historical evidence and personal reflection and are challenging the concept of the neutrality of the archive.
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Interview: Catharine Coleborne and Mary O’Hagan, 21 May 2015, Wellington, New Zealand (1 hour and 35 minutes).
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Coleborne, C. (2020). Asylum Archives and Cases as Stories. In: Why Talk About Madness?. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21096-0_2
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