Abstract

Performing Madness: The Clinic as Stage. In the second half of the nineteenth century, clinical demonstrations became the dominant teaching method in psychiatry, playing a key role in medical‐professional disputes, as well. This paper traces this widely used though historiographically neglected practice of knowledge implementation and mediation, as demonstrated in the psychiatric clinic of the Berlin Charité (Psychiatrische und Nervenklinik der Berliner Charité) from 1881 to 1927. Documentation of this practice, found within individual medical records, forms the basis of this research. The concept of ‘theatricality’ assists in uncovering the dramatic quality of the clinical demonstration: Psychiatric knowledge was not simply disseminated through such a practice; rather, such knowledge was first performatively created through the very logic of its presentation of exemplary patient histories, as well as through the examination and diagnostic positioning of its patients. The ‘success’ of such presentations depended on many variables, related to staff, time, place, and other situational factors. These include the presence of appropriate lecture halls, the availability and calculated selection of patients, and the employment of specific performative techniques by doctors for the sake of producing desired results. As one effect, clinical demonstrations also encouraged patients to both learn and rehearse behavior considered relevant to the particular diagnosis that was to be demonstrated.