ABSTRACT
In the conclusion, I sum up how analysis of psychiatric committal practices in the “Third Reich,” the FRG, and the GDR changes our ideas about German society in the mid-twentieth century. First, committals help illuminate the relationship between state, science, and social practice in a way that challenges common interpretations of the scientification of the social. State and science had only a relatively minor influence on who was committed and why. Second, the book contributes to a more nuanced picture of the dominant concepts of a healthy self in work-centered states or societies. Third, it sheds much light on the relationship between (limits to) freedom, society, and statehood.
