How to Cite

Jaskov, Helena: Negotiating States of Mind: The Transformation of Psychiatric Knowledge in Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2025. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1244

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Identifiers

https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.1244
ISBN 978-3-96822-227-1 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-96822-228-8 (Hardcover)

Published

10/16/2025

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Authors

Helena Jaskov

Negotiating States of Mind

The Transformation of Psychiatric Knowledge in Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan

Negotiating States of Mind examines melancholia's demise as a scientific concept, tracing the conceptual changes that transformed psychiatric thinking in the late nineteenth century. Focusing on Meiji Japan's adaptation of European psychiatric concepts and diagnostic practices, this global intellectual history highlights how social hierarchies, institutional pressures, and quantitative methods shaped our understanding of mental illness. Through detailed case studies of mentally impaired soldiers from the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), it investigates the impact of diagnostic changes on disability pension decisions, revealing real-world effects of conceptual change.

Helena Jaskov is a historian of East Asia and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH). She holds a MA degree in Japanese studies and Chinese studies and completed her PhD at the Karl Jaspers Centre for Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University. Her main research focus lies in the history of knowledge and the history of science. 

Chapters

Table of Contents
Pages
PDF
Title
i-iv
Contents
v-ix
Acknowledgments
1-3
Introduction
5-23
I. Academic Debates, Teaching, and Research
25
1. Rifts and Alliances in Academic Psychiatry
27-51
2. Asylums as Sites of Psychiatric Modernity
53-79
3. Madness in the Laboratory and the Rise of Numbers
81-110
4. Japanese Visions of Melancholia
111-137
II. War and Mental Illness
139
5. Mental Health Provision in the Russo-Japanese War & the Construction of Cases
141-164
6. New Modes of Observation & the Psychologization of Opposition
165-190
7. Etiological Debates & the Question of Responsibility
191-222
Conclusion
223-230
Appendix
Concordance of Patient Case Histories
231-236
Bibliography
237-274
Illustration Credits
275-276
Index
277-281

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