Introduction

This chapter is a brief survey of the various transformations that have occurred over the past 200 (and mostly, past 100) years in the history of psychiatry and its source bases. The traditional asylum sources, and longstanding (but underused) legal records that relate to psychiatry's history are introduced. The huge proliferation in sources and source types is also sketched out – psychiatry reaches beyond medicine and the medical in ways that few other supposedly medical specialisms can match. Just as ‘psychiatry’ has been transformed, so has the discipline of history. From the Annales school of historians, to social, cultural, literary, and postmodern practitioners, the work of historians has transformed and enlarged the purview of history. Both these developments – in psychiatry and in history – bear directly onto the history of psychiatry, and the possible and available sources that might be used to buttress historical accounts of psychiatric practice. There follows a brief discussion of the chapters in turn, preceded by a reflection from the editors on the limitations of this collection, and the changing conditions of its production.