This dissertation examines recurrent patterns in the interaction between psychiatric patients and the systems of knowledge and power that constitute them as patients. These patterns are traced both in the historical migmti::m of patients into and out of the asylum, and in the language used by doctors and patients to account for such migration. Transcripts of interviews with patients and case notes written by doctors are subjected to new forms of quantitative analysis and this is used together with qualitative interpretation to reveal the ways in which disciplinary power operates through confession and surveillance to constitute psychiatric subjects in the tension between freedom and incarceration.PsychologyD.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology
