[From psychiatry enquiry to postmodern psychiatry]

Abstract

The large-scale "Psychiatry Inquiry", or inquest, held in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 'seventies, represented a great step forward in the reformation of psychiatric patient care. However, the general consensus of opinion about the future development crumbled and fell apart by the end of the 'seventies. On the one hand, there was the demand for dissolving the psychiatric large-scale hospital whereas on the other hand the ancient type of lunatic asylum or mental hospital re-entered through the backdoor: therapy wards were separated spatially from care wards without the slightest regard for the modern concepts of mental illness, its treatment and its course. This article tries to point out that both tendencies are an expression of today's "postmodernistic thinking". They offer illusions of solutions, i.e. they simulate solutions in the sense of the postmodern technique of "as though" and do not pay any heed to the interests of the mental patient himself.