ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways historians can analyse museum collections to shed new light on psychiatric history. Focusing on the classic example of the straitjacket to illustrate the way psychiatric objects function as symbols and practical items, it provides an introduction to material culture for the historian of psychiatry. First, it explores how and where we might find psychiatric objects, and how we can begin to analyse them. It examines what we can learn from observing the artefacts themselves, and what we might gain from placing them in the context of other sources. Reading objects alongside patient records, reports, publications, letters, and legal texts can shed new light on institutional life and practices. Objects may reveal the gap between rules and regulations and working practices and experiences within mental health care, and help to shed light on the hidden histories of psychiatric patients, especially women and working-class patients who were less likely to leave behind written accounts of their experiences. Finally, objects can help us as historians to confront our own assumptions. Acknowledging the symbolic meanings that historic items have often gained can help us to acknowledge the nuances in modern experiences of mental health care.
