About
184
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Introduction
My scholarly life as a historian and sociologist was devoted to teaching and research at the universities of Amsterdam, Nijmegen and Maastricht. I published 12 books and edited volumes, almost 80 articles, close to 70 chapters in books, and more than 60 book reviews. Overall, my research covers four fields: history of bicycling, history of psychiatry and mental health care, history of sexuality and gender, and political history of health and citizenship. See also: harryoosterhuis.nl
Current institution
Additional affiliations
March 1996 - present
Huizinga Institute, research school for cultural history
Position
- Senior researcher
Description
- Senoir researcher
Education
May 1992 - May 2025
Department of History Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Maastricht University
Field of study
- History Sociology
Publications
Publications (184)
Jacob Israël de Haan: een vat vol tegenstrijdigheden Harry Oosterhuis Inleiding bij de theatervoorstelling Eer De Haan: Naar liefde zulk een mateloos verlangen Cultuurpodium Smilde, Waterstaatskerk Bovensmilde op 6 oktober 2024 Wie was Jacob Israël de Haan en wat heeft hij ons nu nog te zeggen? Zijn honderdste sterfjaar wordt momenteel herdacht met...
When organized homosexual emancipation took root in the late nineteenth century, it was largely based on the then prevailing biomedical and psychiatric conceptualizations of homosexuality. These presented it as an innate inclination of a minority, while science-based knowledge was seen as the road towards societal acceptance. In this article it is...
This article is about the tension and changing balance between emotional involvement and professional detachment in the practice of nursing in Dutch mental institutions between the 1880s and 1990s. We address this issue in relation to institutional and material conditions, power differences between doctors, nurses and patients, different treatments...
When organized homosexual emancipation took root in the late nineteenth century, it was based to a large extent on the then prevailing biomedical and psychiatric conceptualizations. These presented homosexuality as an innate inclination of a minority, while science-based knowledge was seen as the road towards societal acceptance of such leaning. In...
Critical examination of the historiography of sexual science in late 19th- and early 20th-century sexual science in Germany.
This article explores the antagonism between Sigmund Freud and the German neurologist and sexologist Albert Moll. When Moll, in 1908, published a book about the sexuality of children, Freud, without any grounds, accused him of plagiarism. In fact, Moll had reason to suspect Freud of plagiarism since there are many parallels between Freud’s Drei Abh...
In Skepter 33/4, pp. 28-32
De goede verkeers-voorzieningen in Nederland zijn niet zozeer de oorzaak van de populariteit van de fiets, maar een gevolg ervan. Dat dringt maar moeilijk tot onderzoekers en beleidsmakers door.
In de afgelopen twee decennia zijn overal in de Westerse wereld beleidsplannen gelanceerd om meer mensen op de fiets te krijgen in het dagelijkse vervoer. Er wordt veel sociaalwetenschappelijk en planologisch onderzoek verricht naar de factoren die het fietsen bevorderen dan wel belemmeren. Zowel het beleid als het fietsonderzoek ademen een optimis...
Sexual science or sexology arose in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, when psychiatrists and neurologists began to study and treat deviant sexualities as sickly 'perversions'. The new science of experimental psychology, however, did not engage with this morally contested subject. Research into sexuality was rooted in a biomedical an...
Weinig invloedrijke denkers zijn zo van hun voetstuk gevallen als Sigmund Freud. Het wetenschappelijke gehalte van de psychoanalyse is altijd omstreden geweest en inmiddels zijn er ook vraagtekens gezet bij zijn persoonlijke integriteit. In zijn streven om zijn leer te verspreiden deinsde Freud niet terug voor verdraaiingen, manipulatie en demonise...
Bicycling is not only about technology, physical exercise, traffic infrastructure and sustainability. Wheeling also has a history and, as such, a social and cultural dimension. After briefly explaining how the bicycle was invented and introduced in society in the late nineteenth century, this article focuses on the social and cultural impact of thi...
After the Second World War, the bicycle was superseded by the car as a mass mode of individual transportation throughout the Western world. Since the 1970s, cycling has increased again in several countries, and many governments have introduced policies to promote pedaling in daily transport. In order to underpin these policies, social-scientific an...
The names of pioneers such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, and Magnus Hirschfeld, who carved out sexology as a new scientific field, are well-known. However, others whose thought was crucial to the field, such as the German neurologist Albert Moll (1862–1939), have largely been neglected. If in the early twentieth centur...
Since its emergence as a branch of medicine in the wake of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, psychiatry has experienced significant transformations against the background of different socio-economic and political changes In Western societies. In this wider context we see a recurring tension between the interest of the individual and that of...
In most Western countries psychiatric nursing, from the late nineteenth century onwards, developed as a specialization under medical supervision and within one general training scheme for all nurses. In the Netherlands as well as in the United Kingdom (UK), this occupation, initiated by psychiatrists, more or less distanced itself from somatic nurs...
This review article rebuts central claims put forward by Ralph Leck in his book Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science (2016) and addresses fundamental issues about the role of presentist political concerns in writing the history of sexual science. This book exemplifies the tendency among scholars in the history of sexuality...
In geen enkel land ter wereld wordt zoveel en door zo’n groot deel van de bevolking gefietst als in Nederland. Dat komt niet alleen doordat Nederland vlak is of over veel fietspaden beschikt. Minstens zo belangrijk is de nationale beeldvorming rond het rijwiel. Daardoor leidde de groei van het autoverkeer hier niet, zoals elders, tot een marginalis...
Hoeveel is een mensenleven waard? Een ongemakkelijke vraag die we liever niet stellen en die wellicht wrevel oproept. De waarde van het leven valt toch niet in geld uit te drukken? Getuigt zo’n vraag niet van gevoelloosheid en gebrek aan ethisch besef? Toch dringt deze kwestie zich steeds meer op aan artsen, verzekeraars, managers en budgetbeheerde...
Between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, psychiatrists and neurologists carved out sexology as a new scientific and professional field. The unfolding of sexological knowledge and practices implied new, predominantly biological and psychological, but partly also sociocultural, understandings of sexuality, as well as reformist an...
Governments all over the Western world have introduced policies to promote cycling in daily transport. Social-scientific and traffic planning studies have addressed the development and facilitation of bicycle use. However, there seems to be no clear correlation between the policies implemented and the actual share of cycling in traffic in various c...
Is the history of the bicycle the history of its technology? The focus on technology is in fact a backward move away from the sociological and cultural turn in bicycle history. The bike’s introduction and adoption in society cannot be understood merely as the result of a self-propelling and progressive succession of technological innovations. The s...
This historiographical essay provides an overview of extensive recent work on the history of cycling to show the diverse ways in which the bicycle was adopted and experienced across western societies. Two key aspects are explored. First, it discusses the complex relationship between cycling and modernity, including tensions between ideas about cycl...
This lecture is about the relation between the linguistic dimension of the human sciences, in particular the cognitive role of figurative language, with a focus on metaphor and narrative, and the related methods of conceptual analysis and discourse analysis.
De fiets is in een groot deel van de westerse wereld herontdekt als efficiënt, duurzaam en zelfs trendy vervoermiddel. De populariteit van het rijwiel in kosmopolitische steden met veel hoogopgeleiden en vertegenwoordigers van de ‘creatieve klasse’ krijgt veel aandacht in de media. Ook brengt de marketing van populaire toeristensteden als Parijs, B...
The historiography of the French Revolution illustrates that writing history is not just about the past, but partly also about the times in which historians live and look back at the past, about their nationality and their ideological and political preoccupations. The very diverse ways in which historians have understood the Revolution is related t...
My claim is that Freud's perspective on sexuality in general and his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in particular, should not be considered as a unique and revolutionary breakthrough, but as part of a broader development: the modernization of sexuality. A new understanding of sexuality began to take shape in the last two decades of the nin...
After World War II, Dutch psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals articulated ideals of democratic citizenship. Framed in terms of self-development, citizenship took on a broad meaning, not just in terms of political rights and obligations, but also in the context of material, social, psychological and moral conditions that individ...
After the Second World War, the bicycle was surpassed by the car as the dominant mode of individual transportation in most Western countries. Since the 1970s, however, bicycle use has again gained some support both from the general public and from governments. In the last two decades national governments and cities throughout the Western world, fro...
As a product of nineteenth-century bourgeois society, psychiatry developed in a dynamic between social-political integration and exclusion. Into the twentieth century, institutional psychiatry fulfilled two functions: a medical one (care and cure), which gave priority to the interests of patients, and a social-political one (segregation), which was...
Health has been defined as a basic human right and also, in most of the welfare states in the Western as well as in the former communist world, as a civil right. The Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization drafted in 1945, states that '[t]he enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental right...
Health has been defined as a basic human right and also, in most of the welfare states in the Western as well as in the former communist world, as a civil right. The Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization drafted in 1945, states that '[t]he enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental right...
This article provides an overview of the development of forensic psychiatry in the Netherlands from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The first part addresses the ways forensic psychiatry established itself in the period 1870-1925 and focuses on its interrelatedness with forensic practice, psychiatry's professionalization, the...
Over the last decade, media attention for bisexuality has increased in the Netherlands. Especially among younger people, there appears to be more openness and tolerance for bisexual feelings and behavior. Also, a growing number of individuals seem to identify themselves as bisexual. Has there indeed been a change in attitudes and behaviors involvin...
Around 1900 neurasthenia received much attention in both the medical world and society at large. Based on professional publications by Dutch psychiatrists and neurologists and on patient records from the Rhijngeest sanatorium near Leiden in the Netherlands, this article addresses the meanings and interpretations of this nervous disorder as put forw...
This article explores the approach of dementia paralytica by psychiatrists in the Netherlands between 1870 and 1920 against
the background of international developments. The psychiatric interpretation of this mental and neurological disorder varied
depending on the institutional and social context in which it was examined, treated, and discussed by...
The modern notion of sexuality took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll. This modernisation of sexuality was closely linked to the recognition of sexual diversity, as it was articulated in the medical–psychiatric understanding of what, at that time, was labelled as perversi...
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the nervous illness neurasthenia received much attention in the medical world and in society at large. This article concerns the meanings which physicians and patients attached to this condition. Without losing sight of the mental
and physical realities of neurasthenia, we claim that these meanin...
This chapter discusses how, in the Netherlands from around 1900 until the mid-1980s, the idea of ‘citizenship’ acquired new definitions in the context of developing ‘mental hygiene’ and outpatient mental health care. Formulating views about the position of individuals in modern society and their potential for self-development, psychiatrists and oth...
Het gegeven van de chronische identiteitscrisis van de psychiatrie vormt het uitgangspunt van deze studie over de opkomst en wording van deze medische specialisatie in Nederland tussen 1870 en 1920. Onze veronderstelling is dat de wortels van deze professionele identiteitsproblematiek in deze periode te vinden zijn en dat deze zichtbaar kunnen word...
This article is about the paradox that the Netherlands has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation as a bicycling nation, but that historical interest in the bicycle and bicycling, in particular at the academic level, is not well-developed. The growing international interest in bicycle history in the past few decades has not reverberated in th...
Het onderwerp van dit artikel is de verhouding tussen enerzijds psychiatrie en geestelijke gezondheidszorg en anderzijds godsdienst in de negentiende en twintigste eeuw. Mede vanwege de verzuiling was de invloed van godsdienst op zowel de inhoud als de organisatie van de Nederlandse psychiatrie en geestelijke gezondheidszorg tot omstreeks 1970 grot...
Between 1958 and 1965, a Catholic Pastoral Center in Amsterdam was specifically geared to providing mental care to homosexuals. The Center was part of a Catholic mental health organization and was staffed by several clergymen and psychiatrists. Its establishment directly followed from contacts that evolved earlier in the 1950s between the Amsterdam...
Ons land geldt als fietsland bij uitstek. Tegelijkertijd loopt de beoefening van de geschiedenis van de fiets en het fietsen hier achter bij enkele andere Westerse landen waar in de afgelopen decennia tal van wetenschappelijke publicaties op dit terrein verschenen en nieuwe perspectieven zijn ontwikkeld – een trend die zich in Nederland niet heeft...
Mijn voordracht is gebaseerd op een historiografisch overzichtsartikel over de geschiedenis van het fietsen dat ik samen met mijn collega Manuel Stoffers vorig jaar in het tijdschrift Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden publiceerde. Naar aanleiding van dit artikel hebben we ook een internationale fietsgeschiedenisb...
Begin twintigste eeuw was er voor patiënten in het psychiatrisch ziekenhuis weinig te doen. Hierin kwam verandering door de actievere therapie, die de weg bereidde voor de huidige rehabilitatiebeweging. Een van de voortrekkers, psychiater August Stärcke, krijgt eindelijk erkenning. In de Nederlandse inrichtingspsychiatrie vervulde de zogenaamde ‘ac...
L’argument central du présent article est que la notion moderne de sexualité, telle qu’aujourd’hui nous la comprenons et en avons l’expérience, prit forme à la fin du 19e siècle. Cette modernisation de la sexualité, qui fut une évolution plutôt qu’une révolution, fut étroitement liée à la reconnaissance de la diversité sexuelle, dans la mesure où e...
Veranderingen in attitude en gedrag op seksueel gebied zijn op verschillende manieren, zowel kwantitatief als kwalitatief, te onderzoeken. Dit artikel over biseksualiteit is gebaseerd op een combinatie van historische, sociologische en discours-analytische benaderingen. Ten eerste belichten wij de geschiedenis van de seksuologische begripsvorming m...
The bicycle has received little attention from transport historians, although few scholars would deny that the bicycle became an important mode of transport during the interwar years, significantly enhancing the mobility both of millions of workers and of middle-class men and women. European cycle use went into sharp decline during the postwar peri...
Het thema van dit hoofdstuk is de geschiedenis van het verband tussen gezondheidszorg en democratisch burgerschap. Twee aspecten, enerzijds de toenemende invloed van de staat in de samenleving op basis van het idee van sociale maakbaarheid met behulp van professionele deskundigheid en anderzijds democratische burgerrechten en -plichten, vormen het...
Response In our response to the three reviews of our book we focus on five critical points that were made, namely: the presumed absence of a central question and overall explanatory framework; the argument that the work is not a synthesis; the problem of the interplay between the supply of and demand for mental health care; the relation between the...
The Netherlands has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation as a bicycling nation. However, until now cycling history has received little attention by Dutch academic historians. In contrast, we observe an efflorescence of cycling history abroad which can serve as a source of inspiration for future research on the history of the bicycle in Dutc...
R. Filarski, G. Mom, Van transport naar mobiliteit, [I], De transportrevolutie, 1800-1900, [II], De mobiliteitsexplosie, 1895-2005 ‘Our Most Popular Means of Transportation’. Dutch Bicycle Historiography from an International PerspectiveThe Netherlands has a long-standing and well-deserved reputation as a bicycling nation. However, until now cyclin...
An overview of the life and works of the Dutch psychoanalyst and sexologist Coenraad van Emde Boas.
