In and Out of Magelang Asylum. A Social History of Colonial Psychiatry in the Netherlands Indies, 1923-1942

Abstract

This study sets out to explore the function of mental hospitals in the colonial society of the Netherlands Indies. Who were the individuals that entered asylums in the colony, what social processes led to hospital admission, and what were the mechanisms that related to hospital discharge? In answering these questions, this thesis seeks to uncover the social and institutional embedment of psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands Indies. Magelang Asylum was no place to incarcerate colonial McMurphies — the protagonist in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Hospitalized at Magelang were neglected lunatics who wandered in the streets in a state of confusion and who were completely left to themselves; nursed at Magelang were fathers, mothers, and sons and daughters, who were brought to the hospital by their families in the hope that they would recover from their mental disease; and treated at the asylum were insane who could no longer be maintained by their families because of their aggressive and violent tendencies. This thesis argues that Magelang Asylum was no tool to restrain the indigenous population of the Netherlands Indies. Though available to a relatively small number of people, the asylum offered Indonesians and Chinese an alternative to deal with the troubles a lunatic in the family might cause.