The cultural context of diagnosis: The case of Vincent van Gogh

Hardly anyone has been posthumously diagnosed as much as Vincent van Gogh. This article does not attempt to add yet another illness to the long list, nor indeed to make any definite statement about the 'right diagnosis'. Rather, it attempts to place the diagnoses actually made during his lifetime into their historical and cultural context. It examines how these diagnoses were imbedded in the medical paradigms popular at the time, and how these paradigms in their turn relate to the general cultural context of the era. It also shows how the 'patient' reacted to the diagnoses presented to him and to the underlying medical paradigms. Those who give diagnoses and those who receive them are involved in the same cultural context, taking for granted the medical fashions of their times, including the biases incorporated in them.