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“Insanity Is the Price of Modern Civilization”: Asian Immigration, Civilization, and “Oriental Psychology” in Modern America

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대한의사학회 (The Korean Society For The History Of Medicine)|2021.04|의사학 (Korean Journal of Medical History)|제30권 제1호|pp. 145-192

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Examining debates on insanity (encompassing a wide range of mental troubles) and immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States, this essay engages the discourse of civilization to discuss the ways in which insanity among Asian immigrants, in particular Chinese and Japanese, was understood, defined and stratified. During the period, insanity was regarded as a disease of civilization, which had been increasing due to the struggles of modern life. While Americans witnessed insanity among the “colored” and Asians, they argued that these groups had lower rates of insanity than white Americans and European immigrants because they belonged to lower positions on the civilization scale. Though not explicitly racialist or even racist, the civilization discourse ordered the international world and drew a clear line between white westerners and Asian immigrants. It also informed the American view of “Oriental psychology” and aided the global exchange of medical knowledge. Insanity, it seemed, was curiously absent among the Chinese and Japanese in the United States, and their symptoms and psychoses, if any, were not easy to understand. However, American missionaries, government employees, and medical professionals stationed in China and Japan, who came to see and learn about insanity in Asia, added to the medical understanding of insanity and offered a knowledge base to American psychiatrists who would get to examine the Asian insane at mental hospitals or immigration stations. This exchange, or migration, of knowledge became possible because immigration experiences of Chinese and Japanese in America were rarely taken into account; their inherent and uncivilized nature was believed to remain unchanged regardless of their transoceanic movement. The relative lack of mental troubles for Chinese and Japanese was not considered an asset; the insanity debates confirmed the non-white, non-American status of Asian immigrants, rendering them forever foreign. Moreover, the very distance from western civilization explained why they allegedly suffered less from mental disturbances and how they could resist the typically unsettling effects of mobility and migration. African Americans and Native Americans were viewed through the similar discourses of civilization and mobility, but despite segregation and discrimination, they were not, of course, subject to deportation, which highlighted the unique status of Asians and Asian Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.

Abstract

Examining debates on insanity (encompassing a wide range of mental troubles) and immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century United States, this essay engages the discourse of civilization to discuss the ways in which insanity among Asian immigrants, in particular Chinese and Japanese, was understood, defined and stratified. During the period, insanity was regarded as a disease of civilization, which had been increasing due to the struggles of modern life. While Americans witnessed insanity among the “colored” and Asians, they argued that these groups had lower rates of insanity than white Americans and European immigrants because they belonged to lower positions on the civilization scale. Though not explicitly racialist or even racist, the civilization discourse ordered the international world and drew a clear line between white westerners and Asian immigrants. It also informed the American view of “Oriental psychology” and aided the global exchange of medical knowledge. Insanity, it seemed, was curiously absent among the Chinese and Japanese in the United States, and their symptoms and psychoses, if any, were not easy to understand. However, American missionaries, government employees, and medical professionals stationed in China and Japan, who came to see and learn about insanity in Asia, added to the medical understanding of insanity and offered a knowledge base to American psychiatrists who would get to examine the Asian insane at mental hospitals or immigration stations. This exchange, or migration, of knowledge became possible because immigration experiences of Chinese and Japanese in America were rarely taken into account; their inherent and uncivilized nature was believed to remain unchanged regardless of their transoceanic movement. The relative lack of mental troubles for Chinese and Japanese was not considered an asset; the insanity debates confirmed the non-white, non-American status of Asian immigrants, rendering them forever foreign. Moreover, the very distance from western civilization explained why they allegedly suffered less from mental disturbances and how they could resist the typically unsettling effects of mobility and migration. African Americans and Native Americans were viewed through the similar discourses of civilization and mobility, but despite segregation and discrimination, they were not, of course, subject to deportation, which highlighted the unique status of Asians and Asian Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.

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