ABSTRACT
Just as reformers altered traditional views and policies toward the criminal and the delinquent, so they revised inherited definitions of the etiology of insanity and programs to combat it. In mental health, as in crime and delinquency, Progressives shared a grand sense of mission. Unlike their post-Civil War counterparts, they were not content with custodial care for the chronic patient. Their goals were much more ambitious: to effect a massive reduction in insanity. Many psychiatrists now stood ready to extend their reach into the community, to go out from the asylum into the society. That the superintendents invited him to address them on so notable an anniversary indicated the extent of their own unease. The prospect of achieving cure under such conditions was totally illusory. Mitchell would not allow asylum keepers to hide behind the notion that the routine or environment of an institution could be rehabilitative.
