Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter I Asylum Reform Ideals: Personnel Matters
- Chapter II The Ideal of a Mental Hospital
- Chapter III Female Compassion: Mental Nurse Training Gendered Female
- Chapter IV The Burdensome Task of Nurses
- Chapter V Negotiating Class and Culture
- Chapter VI The Marginalization of Male Nurses
- Chapter VII Controversy and Conflict over the Social Position of Nurses
- Conclusion: The Politics of Mental Health Nursing
- Appendix
- Notes
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Archives
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter V - Negotiating Class and Culture
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter I Asylum Reform Ideals: Personnel Matters
- Chapter II The Ideal of a Mental Hospital
- Chapter III Female Compassion: Mental Nurse Training Gendered Female
- Chapter IV The Burdensome Task of Nurses
- Chapter V Negotiating Class and Culture
- Chapter VI The Marginalization of Male Nurses
- Chapter VII Controversy and Conflict over the Social Position of Nurses
- Conclusion: The Politics of Mental Health Nursing
- Appendix
- Notes
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- List of Archives
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
An analysis of the introduction of mental nursing in asylums reveals the inherent class and gender contradictions of the training ideals. Training provided a metaphor for negotiating a new hierarchical structure, which facilitated the creation of a disciplined, respectable lower middle- and working-class nursing workforce, a process quite similar to changes simultaneously occurring in industry, such as the adherence to regular work routines and stricter time schedules. The process forged new gendered work relationships and new understandings of care shaped according to the cultural and religious context of the various groups involved. Female compassion and a civilized attitude were the antidote to supposed unruly behaviors such as theft, drunkenness, and disobedience among personnel, behaviors generally associated with lower-class morality but considered incompatible with the new somatic routines. Complaints about such lower-class behaviors were not new and had been expressed in similar terms during the era of moral treatment. However, nurse training provided a structure and language through which a definite break with the past could be made. In a manner typical of Dutch culture, this process resulted in a training pattern that differed between the various “pillars” yet adapted to similar social and medical changes. A detailed look at the training system reveals the characteristics and behaviors the “new nurse” was supposed to embrace within the asylum. The domestic ideology fit perfectly the re-creation of a “mistress-servant” relationship within a nurse training hierarchy of head nurse and student nurse. As nurse historian Rafferty identifies, the rhetorical call for “civilization” represented the new values and attributes desirable within a new scientific medical order: enlightenment, rationality, science, Christian purity, innocence, virtue, youth, freshness, gentleness, hygiene, sobriety, gentility, and intelligent obedience.
A Gendered Structure
Women played a crucial role in creating the hierarchy and norms of women's work in which nurses were socialized within asylums. The evolution of the Dutch mental nurse training structure furthers Martha Vicinus’ argument for British nursing that hospital nurses did not create real communities of women that were run and financed by women, as schools, colleges, and settlement houses often were. Complicated struggles with doctors and the traditional structure of nursing, Vicinus argues, prevented nurses from controlling their own situation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rise of Mental Health NursingA History of Psychiatric Care in Dutch Asylums, 1890–1920, pp. 141 - 174Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2003