History
Being Crazy in Ettelbruck?
- Home >
- Being Crazy in Ettelbruck?
THE HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY IN ETTELBRUCK
The Hospice Central around 1890 (L’Hospice Central vers 1890), scan from Maison de Santé Ettelbruck. 1855-1955, Luxembourg 1955, s.p.
“The proverb which says: happy are those who have no history is, as a matter of fact, far from being applicable to the mentally ill of the Grand Duchy.” (“Le dicton qui dit qu’heureux sont les peuples qui n’ont pas d’histoire, est loin, en effet, de pouvoir être appliqué aux aliénés du Grand-Duché.”) – Adolphe Buffet (1889, p. 9).
Such were the thoughts of Dr Adolphe Buffet, director of the Hospice Central resp. the Maison de Santé in Ettelbruck (1883-1904), on the uncertain fate of the mentally ill people in Luxembourg before the creation of the Hospice in 1855. Taking Dr Buffet’s statement as a starting point, we would like to invite you to a tour on the History of Psychiatry in Ettelbruck, a location that is often associated with the presence of the asylum, or the psychiatric hospital of nowadays, respectively. In order to overcome a stigmatising view, we want to have a closer look at the individual persons who have experienced and/ or shaped the development of the Ettelbruck institution, from the Hospice Central (1855), the Maison de Santé (1901), the Hôpital Neuro-Psychiatrique de l’État (HNPE, 1974) to the Centre Hospitalier Neuro-Psychiatrique (CHNP, 1998) (see the timeline). By revisiting some of the representative spots both on the site of the CHNP and in the city centre of Ettelbruck, we want to give an image of the general, while presenting individual stories, like a synecdoche. Our purpose is to go beyond the well-trodden path and provide a more complex view on the history of psychiatry in Luxembourg, by insisting on people, conflicts, marginalisation, antipsychiatry and political matters. You can find the points of interests (POI) with their respective stories by following the links below:
Also check out the bibliography for further references and suggestions!