ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the development of mental health care in the Netherlands from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century in order to explore the relation to socio-political modernization in general and changing meanings of citizenship in particular. Expressing views about the position of individuals in modern society and their possibilities for self-development, psychiatrists and other mental health workers connected mental health to ideals of democratic citizenship. Democratic citizenship presupposes a sense of public commitment on the basis of individual autonomy, self-determination and self-direction. The self-development is divided into four different ideals based on the periods: 1870-1945; 1945-65; 1965-85; and 1985-2005. The link between the democratization and psychologization of citizenship, was illustrated by following the development of mental health care in the Netherlands, is part of a more general historical process in the Western world. In traditional systems of political domination, people are subjected by coercion and force; their inner selves were generally irrelevant.
