"A New Generation of Women": Progressive Psychiatrists and the Hypersexual Female

Lunbeck, Elizabeth

doi:10.2307/3177879

Cited by 36 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…12 Elizabeth Lunbeck shows that this Progressive Era social problem developed, in large part, out of psychologist G. Stanley Hall's and psychiatrist William Healy's explanations for "the emergence of the independent, sexually assertive woman in American society at the turn of the century" that accompanied the changing nature of work in industrial society, which granted young unmarried women unprecedented and unsupervised access to public life and its many diversions. 13 In their studies and others, the period of pubescence and emotional maturation was rife with dangers for girls, "the curiosity, experimentation, and satiation of desire [sexual or otherwise] that was symptomatic of gross defect in a girl was but the commendable manifestation of the boy's natural drive for selfexpression and mastery." 14 The national trend from the 1910s to the 1930s was to incarcerate delinquent girls or those who showed signs of "predelinquency" because courts "aimed to 'save' girls once it became apparent they were 'on the road to ruin.'"…”

Section: The Stagestruck Epidemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

White¹

2018

Theat Surv

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By Mabel Rowland's public accounting, the Institute of the Woman's Theatre helped hundreds of so-called stagestruck girls realize their ambitions by providing a safety net for the pitfalls of the commercial theatre. The organization, officially established in 1926 and in operation until roughly 1930, was said to have begun years earlier, “the outgrowth of a group which was formed in 1910 and used to meet in the Fitzgerald Building.” As president, Rowland—a press agent, well-known comedic monologist, and all-around theatre factotum—was supported by society women and a cadre of famous female writers and performers, including Florence Reed, who served as Vice President, and charter members Julia Arthur, Irene Castle, Rachel Crothers, Helen Hayes, Violet Heming, Elsie Janis, Anita Loos, Mary Pickford, and Mary Shaw, plus about a dozen more. At the time of its official founding, the institute announced that it would undertake three activities. First, it sought to establish a professional Broadway theatre as exclusively a women's operation, employing female playwrights, designers, directors, managers, producers, box-office staff, and so forth: “The only men who will be connected with the enterprise … are the actors and stagehands.” Second and third, the institute would give “aid and advice to girls from out of town who think they have something to offer the theater, read scripts and give opinions thereon, and in other ways labor in behalf of the feminine side of the stage.” The institute's goal of a theatre in tandem with discovering talented women looked to create a meaningful shift in women's inclusion and power within commercial theatre.

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Section: The Stagestruck Epidemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

White¹

2018

Theat Surv

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“…149–162, 188–204). For historical treatments of other high‐grade defective girls, see Lunbeck (), Ryan (), and Rembis ().…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historians including Estelle Freedman, Stephen Noll, Barbara Brenzel, David Rothman, Gerald Grob, and James W. Trent have written extensively on the history of penal, reformatory, and custodial institutions for juvenile delinquents in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Substantial attention has also been granted to the history of criminality in connection with theories of heritable degeneracy by Rafter, Rembis, Rapley, and Lunbeck especially (Rothman, ; Freedman, ; Brenzel, ; Lunbeck, ; Grob, ; Trent, ; Noll, ; Rafter, ; Rapley, ; Rembis, ). On the history of sterilization in the United States, which in many states was pursued as an alternative to permanent segregation of defectives in custodial intuitions, see in particular Reilly( ), Largent (), Lombardo ( and ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Elizabeth Lunbeck has argued that psychopathy in girls was a diagnosis of sexual deviancy, whereas Rafter maintains psychopathy was a diagnosis derived largely from institutional settings and its diagnosis marked a shift in criminology from mental defect to mental illness. My research builds on their contributions to show that although psychopathy was indeed a loosely constructed and flexible category that often did imply sexual deviancy, violent and aggressive tendencies were also necessarily present in girls diagnosed with psychopathy (Lunbeck, , pp. 513–543; Rafter, , pp.…”

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confidence: 99%

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“Safeguarding the Interests of the State” From Defective Delinquent Girls

Sohasky¹

2015

J. Hist. Behav. Sci.

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The 1911 mental classification, "defective delinquent," was created as a temporary legal-medical category in order to identify a peculiar class of delinquent girls in a specific institutional setting. The defective delinquent's alleged slight mental defect, combined with her appearance of normalcy, rendered her a "dangerous" and "incurable" citizen. At the intersection of institutional history and the history of ideas, this article explores the largely overlooked role of borderline mental classifications of near-normalcy in the medicalization of intelligence and criminality during the first third of the twentieth-century United States. Borderline classifications served as mechanisms of control over women's bodies through the criminalization of their minds, and the advent of psychometric tests legitimated and facilitated the spread of this classification beyond its original and intended context. The borderline case of the defective delinquent girl demonstrates the significance of marginal mental classifications to the policing of bodies through the medicalization of intellect.

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“…To understand Terman's statement about prostitution, it is important to realise that 'expert' men often used the term in a far broader sense than twenty-first-century readers might recognise (Lunbeck, 1987). In the early twentieth century, more young American women found themselves employed and living free from familial obligations in large cities than ever before.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexuality, normality and intelligence. What is queer theory up against?

Hegarty

2011

Psychology & Sexuality

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I engage queer theory and the history of the intelligence quotient (IQ) movement in the United States here to re-imagine the critical nature of both projects. Early IQ researchers, such as Terman and Goddard, hypothesised that IQ was necessary for sexual morality and tested the hypothesis that prostitutes had lower IQ than other women. Terman was further concerned that gifted children not be 'queer' and appealed to a Freudian logic of sublimation to explain why children whom he deemed gifted sometimes engaged in homosexual acts. Intelligence testing is not simply a 'disciplinary' form of power/knowledge of the sort described by Foucault in Discipline and Punish; it is not oriented towards normalising 'gifted' people that it individualises. Rather, gifted people are made visible within a strategy of changing government to accommodate their difference from typical intelligence. This analysis of power suggests new ways of thinking about the intersectional politics of conservative rhetoric that relies on IQ testing, such as the book The Bell Curve.

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"A New Generation of Women": Progressive Psychiatrists and the Hypersexual Female

Cited by 36 publications

References 2 publications

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

In Behalf of the Feminine Side of the Commercial Stage: The Institute of the Woman's Theatre and Stagestruck Girls

“Safeguarding the Interests of the State” From Defective Delinquent Girls

Sexuality, normality and intelligence. What is queer theory up against?

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