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“Mental Hygiene” and Child Governmentality in Egypt
Abstract
In 1945, Dr. ‘Abdel Azīz al Qūṣī published his seminal work ’Usus Aṣ-ṣiḥḥah an-nafsiyyah (Foundations of Mental Hygiene). Earlier In 1938, his master, Ismā‘īl al Qabbānī published Qiyās al dhakā’ fil madāris al ’ibtidā’iyyah bil Qāhirah (Measurement of Intelligence in Cairo Primary Schools), first of its scope and methodology in Egypt and the Arab World. The significance of the work of both Qabbānī and Qūṣī is due to their introduction and representation of the “mental hygiene” movement, a hybrid of pedagogy and psychology. “Mental hygiene” centred around “the development of personality,” with the assumption that personality maladjustments were the cause of individual mental disorder and social problems of all sorts (shudhūdh). Because childhood was the locus of development of personality, any deviance would render children vulnerable to personality disorders. As such, according to both Qabbānī and Qūṣī, the school was the strategic agency to prevent, detect and "adjust" problems in children's personality development. Due to the work of al Qūṣī, we see for the first time in Egypt the publication and distribution of government sponsored booklets addressed to children giving “proper” and scientific sex education. This shift from a moral discourse on sex to one more entrenched in medicine and science signaled a nuanced case of biopower aiming at the “normalization” of childhood sexuality, and managing the body and mind of the child as a member of the population. Simultaneously, the work of al Qabbānī signaled the medicalization of education by introducing IQ testing and “experimental schools” to “quantify” the intelligence of children and consequently pathologize those who did not conform to the “normal.” The work of Qabbānī and Qūṣī represent yet another episode of “childhood gaze” by “child experts” which started at the fin-de-siecle Egypt, reaching a peak in the 1940s. Policies and laws were drawn to rescue, protect and reform the child, who was perceived as the capital and future of the nation. Scientific discourses on child health, juvenile delinquency and pedagogy helped tectonically move the child from the private domain of the family to the public sphere of state control. Attempts to create a single “ideal childhood” resulted in the construction of multiple childhoods, manifesting themselves in criminal, legal, pathological, psychological and pedagogical categories. It is through this prism of rogue childhoods, and the dynamic process of “constructing” and “othering,” “normalizing” and “abnormalizing” that the work of al Qabbānī and al Qūṣī is situated and read accordingly.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries