["Querulantenwahnsinn"--insanity or stubbornness?].

The German psychiatric concept "Querulantenwahnsinn" expresses the link between the juridical discourse, the critiques and the legitimation of asylum psychiatry around 1900. The paper will at first analyse the discourse on "Querulantenwahnsinn". In a second step the "patient's view" (Porter) on that social and psychiatric phenomenon will be constructed on the basis of medical records of the Landesheilanstalt Marburg (asylum). The inquiry of patient's experience demands a reflection of the fact that the clinical picture of "Querulantenwahnsinn" was very plausible. It had been created by psychiatrists as a reaction to the critiques on asylum psychiatry. Every attempt to question the pathologisation of a critical position on asylum psychiatry, every resistance results in a consolidation of the psychiatric diagnosis. Consequently the pathologisation, the confinement into an asylum influenced the auto-perception of the patients--so they possibly enroled in the discourse on "Querulantenwahnsinn" against their explicit will. The paper points out that the discourse on "Querulantenwahnsinn" is an expression of social conflicts and the legal culture in the Wilhelmine society.