Degeneration (medical history)

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The idea of ​​a degeneration or degeneration ( Latin de- "ent-"; genus "type, gender") of humans or human civilization had a great influence on science , art and politics between the 1850s and the 1950s . Certain morphological characteristics (“stigmata degenerationis”) should reveal the innermost nature of the human being, especially his character and his tendency to neurotic and mental illnesses , but also supposedly his criminal disposition.

The thought of degeneration arises from a pessimistic worldview . At this time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inheritance , eugenics and racial theories are closely related to these notions of general decline . In today's consciousness, the term is associated on the one hand with compulsory sterilizations , which culminated in " Aktion T4 " in National Socialist Germany , and on the other hand with a criticism of society at the fin de siècle .

Concept history

Origins of the term "degeneracy"

Antiquity to the 18th century

The problem of degeneracy is very old. As early as Aristotle (384–322 BC) the idea emerged that suicide, crimes and vices of all kinds let a people degenerate and perish. In Rousseau (1712–1778) there are some elements of the later use of the term in science. Here, “degeneracy” is understood to mean a (negative) deviation from the natural state . According to Rousseau's account, civilization causes the originally robust human nature to be constantly weakened through overly refined nutrition for the rich or too poorly fed the poor, as well as through mental overexertion. ("L'homme naît bon, la société le corrompt.") In England ( Spleen ) in the 18th century people were downright proud of the fact that, as a result of this refinement of civilization, there were particularly many psychologically conspicuous people. This was later in the 19th century in America ( neurasthenia ) as well.

19th century era

Social context

The industrial revolution and the social and economic changes it caused, especially in the second half of the 19th century, led to immense upheavals. There has been talk of a downright culture shock on several occasions. As already indicated, this idea had spread in America as a term for neurasthenia . In Austria came under the influence of the Viennese decadence that of Sigmund Freud developed concept of the unconscious .

There was particular concern about the consequences of urbanization . The increasing alcoholism and the effects of syphilis were identified as a danger as well as the assumed general overload due to overstimulation as well as homosexuality , crime , suicide and the general decline of morals. Such fears were nothing new in and of themselves, but they were now linked to eugenic , racial, and medical research. In psychiatry in particular , the supposed relationship between these phenomena and mental illnesses was discussed. The idea of ​​the doctrine of degeneration was essentially shaped by the French psychiatric school, which was leading from 1800 to 1900 and was open to the ideas of the somatics .

Representative of the thought
Morel

The French psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809–1873) gave explanations for somatic and psychological anomalies or pathologies, which he called "degenerations" based on a type normal human being created by God . His book Traité des Dégénérescences physiques, Intellectuelles et Morales de l'Espéce Humaine was influential . In addition, Morel expressly mentions an intensifying process. With his conception of degeneracy as a deterioration of the species that progresses from generation to generation, which is conditioned by hereditary influences, he influenced the thinking of the time in general and that of the growing generation of psychiatrists in particular to a large extent. Morel was impressed by the anthropological-somatic research by Gall (1758–1828), to whom Jean-Étienne Esquirol (1772–1840) had already shown himself to be open-minded.

According to Morel, the degeneration could result from:

  • Poisoning (malaria, alcohol in its germ-damaging effects recognized today during pregnancy, opium, food poisoning, etc.)
  • the social milieu
  • morbid temperament
  • moral illness
  • Congenital or acquired damage
  • Heredity

Morel's concept of degeneration is based on the one hand on a mixture of religious ideas and ethnological-anthropological ideas. Humanity evolves away from a "type primitif" or "type normal", that is, an original human being who can be seen as identical with Adam .

On the other hand, Morel's theory was made possible by pre- Darwinian ideas , particularly those of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck . This claimed that certain assumed characteristics (drug use, perversions, etc.) could be inherited. Practically everything was seen as heritable, including scabies and leprosy . A very vague concept of "hereditary predisposition" allowed Morel to trace the most varied diseases in one generation back to very different diseases in the previous generation.

Morel's degenerative scheme in particular had a profound effect on psychiatry in the second half of the century. Accordingly, pathologies should increase from generation to generation:

  • first generation: nervous temperament and debauchery
  • second generation: strokes , epilepsy , hysteria , and alcoholism as well
  • third generation: suicide, psychosis and mental weakness and finally in the
  • fourth generation: congenital nonsense and malformations

The last stage of degeneration is always sterility. The degenerate can be recognized by the stigmata of degeneration:

"Asymmetries of the halves of the face or other corresponding body parts, also anomalies of the skull structure, protruding or unequal ears, grown ear lobes, squinting, stuttering, deformity of the teeth, missing or excess limb parts, stunting or deviating formation of the genital organs, (...)."

Obviously, this is a theory that "every Tertian (...) could have punished the lies based on historical genealogies " ( Eugen Bleuler ).

Only at the beginning of the second decade in the 20th century could this assumption be refuted due to the untenability of the hereditary theses in particular (due to the rediscovery and rapid expansion of Mendel's rules from 1900).

Magnan

A change in the concept of degeneracy occurred with Darwinism . Valentin Magnan , the second great French degeneracy theorist, rejected the religious idea of ​​degeneration, which assumed degeneration since the Fall, and combined regression in the sense of Darwin with the idea of ​​degeneration. A perfect human type can never stand at the beginning of human development, only at its end. He sees certain immanent disturbances laid out in the evolutionary path of man, which not only inhibit his development, but can also change the direction of movement towards destruction. The most important innovation is the unstable or »dégénéré supérieur«, the most important characteristic of which is disharmony. He has the same characteristics as the normal degenerate, but is intelligent. It is identified by the

“Lack of balance not only between the intellectual and moral faculties, but also between the individual intellectual faculties themselves. A hereditarian can be a scholar, (...) a skilled statesman, and in doing so show wide gaps in moral terms, strange tendencies, surprising irregularities of the Way of life."
Lombroso

The Italian founder of criminal anthropology Cesare Lombroso , the Nordau his book later degeneration devoted, put his work (the criminals , genius and insanity and degeneration and genius) to first connect of degeneration and a criminal disposition and degeneration and the genius on the other.

The born criminal after Lombroso suffers from a regression to a more priminative brain type, which affects his behavior. Lombroso wanted to determine the criminal disposition of people based on external signs such as the shape of the head. That is why he has been viewed in part as the prototype of the pseudo-scientist par excellence. Lombroso tried to back up his studies with human dimensions and statistical methods as well as social and economic data. About a third of criminals are born criminals.

Hippolyte Taine wrote to Lombroso that Lombroso had shown the people as greasy, wild orangutans with human faces who could not act otherwise than they do. If these raped, stole and killed, it was because of their nature and their past that they did it. This is one more reason to destroy them as soon as one can be sure that these orangutans are and will remain. That is why the death penalty should be advocated. Lombroso later published this assessment in the preface to his book L'Homme criminel , but advocated humane treatment of criminals and advocated limits on the death penalty.

Lombroso also began collecting art and written products from "delinquents" and exhibiting them in his museum. In the fine arts, he wanted to recognize the pathological symptoms of excessive accuracy in detail, the abuse of symbols, lettering and accessories, the preference for a single color and the unbridled pursuit of new things.

Krafft-Ebing

In Germany, important psychiatrists such as Wilhelm Griesinger and Richard von Krafft-Ebing became devoted supporters of Morel, who also left German psychiatry under his influence for decades.

Krafft-Ebing developed the idea of psychoneuroses , which he viewed as a transition state to degeneration. It is also he who classifies a large number of sexual deviations from the norm as phenomena of degeneration. He was of the opinion that modern civilization made enormous demands on the nervous system and thus caused “ instinct malfunctions ”. The predisposition to nervous diseases ( neurasthenia ) can be inherited, but not the nervous diseases themselves.

The explanation of pathologies by hereditary degeneration goes hand in hand with anti-Semitic racist ideas not only in Krafft-Ebing, but also in other greats in psychiatry in 19th century Germany (e.g. Emil Kraepelin ): Jews in particular are hereditarily degenerated as a race and to a greater extent Nonsense disposed. For example, Theodor Kirchhoff writes in his Outline of Psychiatry for Students and Doctors :

“Perhaps the Jews must be ascribed a relatively greater disposition (to be insane); but here too there may be another reason than racial peculiarity. As is well known, Jews often marry in close family circles, which is why inheritance through inbreeding leads to a rapidly growing disposition. "

Max Nordau

Max Nordau's writing Entartung (1892) is a polemical reckoning with the main currents of contemporary art from the standpoint of a pathological aberration, in which “all the phenomena of modern art that he personally disliked as symptoms of the degeneration and that of a purely medical degeneration were branded. "( Oswald Bumke )

Nordau even said that modern civilization had created completely new mental illnesses:

“Some diseases of the nervous system are already referred to as a direct result of certain cultural influences. The names 'railway spinal cord' and 'railway brain' [...] show that they [the English and American pathologists] recognize as their cause the tremors that the train passenger constantly suffers. "

In his writing “Entartung” Nordau took over the concept of degeneration coined by Lombroso and applied it to the works of artists such as Nietzsche , Tolstoy , Richard Wagner , Zola and Ibsen and to artistic phenomena such as symbolism , spiritualism , egomania , mysticism , Parnassianism and diabolism . Furthermore, Nordau announced a human catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. The book sparked controversy that lasted into the 1960s. Numerous authors tried to refute the theses it put forward, including George Bernard Shaw .

time of the nationalsocialism

The term degeneracy was used centrally within the National Socialist ideology. In this ideologue, the terms degeneracy and decay formed the opposite pole to the völkisch idea. Under National Socialism, degeneration was understood not only as a degeneration of the soul, but also as a degeneration of the blood. Degeneration was understood as the physical and spiritual decline of a race, of a people as a result of racial mixing, hereditary diseases and the effects of the modern world. The idea of degeneration was used to legitimize state measures and interventions in the lives of individuals, which culminated in the murder of groups of people. In addition, the Nazi rulers used the term degeneration for forms of art that did not correspond to their aesthetic ideal and ideological worldview (see Degenerate Art and Degenerate Music ). However, contrary to popular belief, the term “degenerate” in National Socialism was not primarily associated with Judaism, at least in the field of fine arts.

Critique of such degeneracy theories

Since the 1920s at the latest, it has been scientifically proven that such far-reaching hereditary theses, as they are based on Morel and his successors, are unfounded.

Oswald Bumke

In his 1912 work on nervous degeneration , Oswald Bumke criticized previous research on degeneracy. The main points of his criticism are the inheritance of acquired diseases, ideas about the transmission of mental illnesses, and the allegedly negative influence of modern culture on selection.

Inheritance of acquired diseases

The whole dogma of degeneracy stands and falls with the assumption that "acquired" pathological properties are transferred to the offspring or at least can be transferred. Bumke criticizes previous research on guinea pigs. This was made epileptic by surgical interventions, whereupon some (!) Of her offspring were also epileptic. If animals made sick by operations produce sick offspring, then there is no inheritance, but germ damage. Bumke tries to support his thesis by saying that ritual circumcisions have been carried out for millennia, or that the feet of Chinese women are mutilated. However, hereditary transmission of such changes has never been observed. Heredity of nervous diseases is even less possible.

Transmission of mental illness

In general, Bumke criticizes the foundations of psychiatric heredity research. The attempt is absurd, "to add everything that can be detected in pathological traits in a person's ascendency and now to want to show the total exposure in percentages in a psychiatric course sheet". Between four and ninety percent of all mental illnesses would be considered hereditary - depending on how broadly the term is interpreted. Another point of attack of his criticism are the "stigmata degenerationis". In Bumke's time, these still play a role in Näcke's work, among other things. ("Are the signs of degeneration really worthless?") Bumke thinks that most of the so-called "signs of degeneration" are "nothing but common varieties that would prove nothing against the mental health of the person afflicted with them, even if they affected the brain itself".

Bumke also concludes that mental illness is not dominantly inherited. The prospects of "getting through" are no greater for pathological qualities than for normal ones (such as eye color). The likelihood of the disease would only exist for those who develop two pathological hereditary tendencies in the same direction from both parents.

Influence of civilization on selection

Notions of negative selection by modern culture were widespread, and it was believed that poor "genetic material" was preferred. Nietzsche writes that "civilization brings about the physiological decline of a race". The charge of panmixie is made against civilization. August Weismann writes:

“Let's just think of the teeth, where the art of the» dental technician «has almost made it so far that one would like to prefer artificial teeth to natural ones. In any case, no one today needs to die from insufficient nutrition as a result of bad teeth. "

The same allegations have been made against nearsightedness , low physical strength, or the inability to breastfeed. This tendency would be reinforced by modern hygiene . Infant care is also a factor that jeopardizes the “quality of our breed” (Schallmeyer).

Bumke's criticism of this is based on three levels. The top level relates to the effectiveness of the selection. Their effect is simply generally limited. He also doubts that nearsightedness or the inability to breastfeed are more likely to be inherited. He also registers that it is the basic principle of the developmental idea that the characteristics are bred out that are advantageous for the existence of the species. It is a trivial truth that the development of brain power is crucial in the evolution of humans. In this respect, the idea that intelligence “too highly” developed would be unnatural and dangerous and the preliminary stage of degeneration (...) is by no means as self-evident as it seems to many. The same applies to hygiene. Infectious diseases did not "purify" a " race ". Hygiene prevents healthy people from getting sick and not the "eradication" of sick people. Regarding the claim that the mentally handicapped could reproduce in insane asylums because of survival , he said the opposite was true. Most prison inmates would have lived in freedom 100 years ago and had children there. It is also very questionable whether this condition was such a major disaster.

He sees in the demands for the sterilization of these handicapped people the danger that “the group of individuals who are considered dubious [will be drawn ever wider and] (…) that similar wishes will soon be made for the treatment of demonstrably (sic!) Or allegedly inferior races could. "

Karl Jaspers

Karl Jaspers systematized the subject of the theory of degeneration (“the stigmata”) as “meaningfully objectifiable facts” in the context of expressive psychology, but emphasized that these stigmata could not be precisely observed and grasped scientifically. H. not measurable and quantifiable. The theory of degeneration is therefore a reality that can be grasped intuitively (and above all artistically), a typology that sharpens our sense of form, but does not justify practical conclusions. He presented the degeneration theory on a par with the physiognomy , the constitution typology Ernst Kretschmer , the facial expression recognition and graphology . The result is at most a pseudo-scientific knowledge, insofar as the doctrine of degeneration intends and strives for a comprehensive knowledge of the nature of all facts. In this respect, the psychiatric theory of degeneration differs from the concept of degeneration used in other medicine .

Stigmata degenerationis

The following were considered morphological abnormalities: Body proportions that differed greatly from the average, such as For example, legs that are too long in relation to the upper body, strange skull shapes, such as tower skulls , deviating bone shapes, such as a lack of chin, excessive smallness of the mastoid process , tooth deformities, high palate, inhibitory malformations such as harelip , excessive or missing body hair, tremors, hearing loss , status dysraphicus , Tics , strabismus , excessive salivation etc. There was a strong interest in nose and ear shapes, e.g. B. grown ear lobes, large protruding ears, protruding Darwin's ear cusp and for movable ears.

Lasting developments

Magnan wasn't the only known psychiatrist who turned to anti-alcoholism. Also Forel , Kraepelin and Bleuler were dedicated to this task. In the 19th century, the Good Templar Order - in Boston in 1826, in England in 1832 -, the Blue Cross in Germany in 1851 and many other drinking sanctuaries were established.

In a positive way, the doctrine of degeneration drew attention to the social question and can therefore in a certain sense be regarded as a forerunner of today's social psychiatry .

The theory of degeneration can also be seen as a forerunner of biological psychology .

literature

  • Erwin H. Ackerknecht : Brief history of psychiatry . 3. Edition. Enke, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-432-80043-6 .
  • S. Ascheim: Nordau, Nietzsche and Degeneration . In: Journal of Contemporary History , 28, 1993, pp. 42-57.
  • Ian Dowbiggin: Degeneration and Hereditarianism. In: Bynum, Porter, Shepherd (Eds.): Anatomy of Madness. Volume 1, 1987.
  • Andrew Lyndsay Farrall, The Origins and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement, 1865-1925 . Garland, New York 1985.
  • Sander Gilman: The Mad Man as Artist: Medicine, History and Degenerate Art . In: Journal of Contemporary History , 20/4 (Medicine, History and Society), 1985, pp. 575-597.
  • Sander Gilman, R. Chamberlin (Eds.): Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress . New York 1985.
  • Richard M. Goodman: Genetic disorders among the Jewish people. Baltimore 1979, pp. 421-431.
  • W. Greenslade: Degeneration, Culture and the Novel, 1880-1940 . Cambridge 1994.
  • M. Hawkins: Social Darwinism in European Thought . 1996.
  • Greta Jones: Social Darwinism and English thought . 1980.
  • Daniel J. Kevles: In the Name of Eugenics. Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity . Knopf, New York 1985.
  • S. Ledger: In darkest England: the terror of degeneration in fin de siecle England . In: Literature and History , 4/2, 1995, pp. 71-86.
  • Roland Littlewood: Ideology, Camouflage or Contingency? Racism in British Psychiatry . In: Transcultural Psychiatry , 30/3, 1993, pp. 243-290.
  • Bill Luckin: Revisiting the idea of ​​degeneration in urban Britain 1830-1900 . (PDF) In: Urban History , 33/2, 2006, pp. 234–252.
  • M. Neve: The Influence of Degenerationist Categories in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry, with Special Reference to Great Britain . In: Yosio Kawakita u. a. (Ed.): History of Psychiatric Diagnoses . Tokyo 1997.
  • Robert A. Nye: The Rise and Fall of the Eugenics Empire: Recent Perspectives on the Impact of Biomedical Thought in Modern Society . In: The Historical Journal , Vol. 36, No. 3, Sept. 1993, pp. 687-700.
  • Daniel Pick : Faces of degeneration: a European disorder, c. 1848 - c. 1918 . Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge et al. a. 1996, ISBN 0-521-36021-8 . Focuses on France, England, Italy; Reviews by M. Biddis (PDF); WH Schneider , RA Nye, PMC 1036284 (free full text).
  • Daniel Pick: The degenerating Genius of the Fin de Siecle . In: History Today , 42, 1992, pp. 17-22.
  • H. Rimle, A. Hunt: From Sinners to Degenerates: the medicalization of morality in the nineteenth century . In: History of the Human Sciences , 15/1, 2002, pp. 59-89
  • Volker Roelcke : Illness and cultural criticism. Psychiatric interpretations of society in the bourgeois age (1790–1914). Frankfurt 1999
  • Marianne Schuller: “Degeneration”. The history of a concept that made history . In: Heidrun Kaupen-Haas , Christian Saller (Ed.): Scientific racism. Analysis of continuity in human and natural sciences. Campus, Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 978-3-593-36228-1 , pp. 123-137.
  • A. Scull, S. Mackenzie, N. Hervey: Masters of Bedlam . 1996, chap. 8: Degeneration and despair: H. Maudsley (1835-1918) .
  • Richard A. Soloway: Demography and Degeneration. Eugenics and the declining birthrate in twentieth-century Britain. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1990.
  • M. Thomson: Sterilization, Segregation & Community Care . In: History of Psychiatry , 1992.
  • E. Traverso: The Origins of Nazi Violence . New York 2003.
  • Paul Weindling: Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 . Cambridge University Press, 1989.
  • Peter Weingart , Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz : Race, Blood and Genes. History of eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany. Frankfurt 1988.
  • Henry Maudsley: Heredity in Health and Disease . In: Fortnightly Review . tape 39 , 1886, p. 648-659 .
  • Max Nordau: degeneration. 1895, reprinted with introduction by George Mosse , Lincoln 1993.
  • George Bernard Shaw: The Sanity of Art: An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate. 1895. In: Shaw: Major Critical Essays. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1986.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Erwin H. Ackerknecht : Brief history of psychiatry . 3. Edition. Enke, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-432-80043-6 ; (a) Re. “Pessimism”: p. 53; (b) Re. “Formation of the thought of degeneration through French psychiatry”: pp. 41, 53; (c) Re. “French School” (Morel, Esquirol): pages 48, 60; (d) Re. “Factors of degeneration according to Morel”: p. 55; (e) Re. "Anti-alcoholism": p. 56
  2. ↑ Mario Erdheim : The social production of unconsciousness. An introduction to the ethno-psychoanalytical process . 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 456, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-28065-1 , pp. 41–161.
  3. ↑ Volker Roelcke : Degeneration. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 290.
  4. ^ Theodor Kirchhoff: Outline of psychiatry for students and doctors. Reprint of the edition from 1899, Franz Deuticke Leipzig and Vienna, quoted here. to http://www.amazon.com/Grundriss-Psychiatrie-f%C3%BCr-Studierende-%C3%84rzte/dp/1421200635
  5. ^ George Bernard Shaw , The Sanity of Art. An Exposure of the Current Nonsense about Artists being Degenerate. 1908.
  6. ^ A b Hans Henning Kunze: Restitution "Degenerate Art": Property Law and International Private Law. Berlin / New York 2000, p. 11.
  7. ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. P. 181.
  8. ^ A b Karl Jaspers : General Psychopathology . 9th edition. Springer, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-540-03340-8 ; Part 1: The individual facts of the soul, Chapter 4: The meaningful facts, § 1 Physiognomics, p. 223 f .; 3rd part: The causal relationships of mental life (explanatory psychology), 2nd chapter: Heredity, e) The question of the causes of the first or new occurrence of mental illnesses: 1. Damage through inbreeding or hybridization; 2. Degeneration, p. 423 f .; (a) Re. “General assessment”: mainly p. 223 f .; (b) on Stw. "Stigmata": pp. 223 f., 424.