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    Mothering in the frame: cinematic microanalysis and the pathogenic mother, 1945–67

    Joice, Katie (2021) Mothering in the frame: cinematic microanalysis and the pathogenic mother, 1945–67. History of the Human Sciences 34 (5), pp. 105-131. ISSN 0952-6951.

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    Abstract

    This article examines the use of cinematic microanalysis to capture, decompose, and interpret mother–infant interaction in the decades following the Second World War. Focusing on the films and writings of Margaret Mead, Ray Birdwhistell, René Spitz, and Sylvia Brody, it examines the intellectual culture, and visual methodologies, that transformed ‘pathogenic’ mothering into an observable process. In turn, it argues that the significance assigned to the ‘small behaviours’ of mothers provided an epistemological foundation for the nascent discipline of infant psychiatry. This research draws attention to two new areas of enquiry within the history of emotions and the history of psychiatry in the post-war period: preoccupation with emotional absence and affectlessness, and their personal and cultural meanings; and the empirical search for the origin point, and early chronology, of mental illness.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): film, infancy, microanalysis, mothering, psychiatry
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 21 Jul 2021 10:46
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:11
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/45250

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