Att bearbeta en behandling : En analys av Lena Cronqvists gestaltningar av den svenska mentalvården från det tidiga 1970-talet

Sammanfattning

This essay examines how Lena Cronqvist portrays the Swedish psychiatric care and herself in relation to it in a series of paintings produced in 1971 following her treatment at a mental hospital in 1969 due to a postpartum psychosis. The four chosen paintings are Inlåst (Locked up) (1971), Medicineringen (Medication) (1971), Elchock (Electric Shock) (1971) and Enskilt samtal (Private Conversation) (1971). The paintings are analysed using Erwin Panofsky's method in three steps for iconological analysis and with a theoretical framework consisting of Michel Foucault’s thoughts about power in psychiatric care and a perspective based on feminism and gender studies. The results show that even though the motifs show differing aspects of the care in the mental hospital some themes can be found in all of the paintings. In the paintings Cronqvist focuses on the hospital as both having characteristics of a prison in a physical sense but also a more abstract sense. Another central theme is the hierarchical aspects of her stay where she is both subordinate as a patient in relation to the doctors but also as a woman in relation to them as men. In the paintings she portrays how she is made a subject under the doctors and under the institution and through painting her experiences she then gets to shape her subjectivity herself.