ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the history of Norwegian forensic psychiatry. The author focuses first on the forensic psychiatric assessments of female patients at Østmarka Asylum from the late 1930s through to the late 1960s. She looks in particular at the ways in which psychiatrists portrayed their socioeconomic status by taking into account the patient’s educational background, occupation, as well as their parents’ occupations. She then compares these factors to the social backgrounds of male patients at the Norwegian Criminal Asylum in Trondheim. The psychiatrists’ understanding of female mental health seemed to be related to the notion of gender- specific ‘respectability’. The sexual behaviour of female patients was prioritised and scrutinised even when their crimes were non-sexual. In particular, open displays of female sexuality were clearly perceived as somehow being violations of the norms of feminine respectability. The forensic assessment processes at Østmarka represent cross-class encounters in which a male psychiatrist’s conception of a normal woman was most likely influenced by the (or at least his) middle-class ideal of femininity.
