ABSTRACT
The spatial division of asylums by gender affected the daily lives and routines of all who worked and lived within them. The few who designed and administered asylums - all of whom were men - constructed ideals of masculinity and femininity, male and female behaviour, that reflected their own ideals of gender, class and family. These often both defined and reflected ideas, and definitions, of mental illness itself. Definitions of mental illness have varied and changed over time; in the nineteenth century both 'moral insanity' and 'masturbatory insanity' became newly defined as pathological. Neither category now exists. Categories of mental illness, in other words, are socially and historically constructed, and such categories include ideals of gender: 'gender is embedded in the concept of mental disorder itself'. 1 In the twentieth century women have been more frequently defined and treated as mentally ill than men. The female patient population of Severalls was consistently greater than the male, but this did not necessarily mean mental illness was, or is, more common in women
than in men. Rather, it suggests women are treated more often as if they were mentally ill. Busfield points out that 'much psychiatric theory regarding women is revealed as more ideological than scientific' and that clinicians' concepts of adult mental health varied considerably between women and men.2
