Between psychology and pedagogy: "moral orthopedics" and case studies of children...

In the latter decades of the 19th century, European physicians debated a controversial practice that mixed placebos with suggestion therapy to treat children diagnosed with neurotic disorders and behavioral problems. Designed to optimize suggestibility in juvenile patients, this "moral orthopedics" offered parents and therapists the message that children could be saved from becoming victims of their own personalities, of familial neuroses, or even of public health problems. Case studies, published in medical journals and books, circulated accounts of innovative strategies to treat childhood hysteria and to change habits that were considered destructive. Moral orthopedics actualized the insight that suggestibility could be therapeutically productive for juvenile subjects. However, because its adherents sought to manipulate patients' behavior and health by influencing unconscious thought, moral orthopedics provoked questions of expertise and disciplinary propriety among domains of medicine, law, and philosophy. This article reconstructs the controversy surrounding moral orthopedics by examining case studies. I argue that adherents of moral orthopedics did overcome philosophical objections raised against the method, and that they did so through what physician Edgar B6rillon referred to as "education of the will."

Hist Psychol. 2011 Feb;14(1):26-52. Rose AC. Department of History, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401, USA. crestienne@gmail.com