Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences Advance Access originally published online on November 7, 2008
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 2009 64(2):173-212; doi:10.1093/jhmas/jrn064
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"A Fine New Child": The Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic and Harlem's African American Communities, 1946–1958
Correspondence: * Dennis Doyle, Department of History, P.O. Box H, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Mississippi 39762. Email: dad169{at}msstate.edu
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Abstract |
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In 1946, the Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic, a small outpatient facility run by volunteers, opened in Central Harlem. Lafargue lasted for almost thirteen years, providing the underserved black Harlemites with what might be later termed community mental health care. This article explores what the clinic meant to the African Americans who created, supported, and made use of its community-based services. While white humanitarianism often played a large role in creating such institutions, this clinic would not have existed without the help and support of both Harlem's black left and the increasingly activist African American church of the "long civil rights era." Not only did St. Philip's Church provide a physical home for the clinic, it also helped to integrate it into black Harlem, creating a patient community. The article concludes with a lengthy examination of these patients' clinical experiences. Relying upon patient case files, the article provides a unique snapshot of the psychologization of postwar American culture. Not only does the author detail the ways in which the largely working class patient community used this facility clinic, he also explores how the patients engaged with modern psychodynamic concepts in forming their own complex understandings of selfhood and mental health.
Key Words: African Americans • patient experiences • Lafargue Clinic • psychiatry • religion • Harlem
Thanks to the JHMAS's anonymous reviewers for their insightful and useful criticisms. I am also grateful to Nancy Tomes, Christopher Sellers, and Amy Gangloff for the helpful comments and suggestions they each made on earlier versions of this article.
Throughout the article I make use of patient case files. To protect the privacy of the former patients and their family members, I have taken great pains to disguise the patients' identities, withholding any specific information that could potentially reveal the patients' identity and the identity of their blood relatives. The names of all patients, relatives, and even some clinicians have been withheld and replaced with unrelated pseudonyms.