Stimulating a normal adjustment: Misbehavior, amphetamines, and the electroencephalogram at the bradley home for children

Abstract

This article uses an historical case study to describe the influence of social and contextual factors on the adoption of somatic approaches to children's misbehavior. The child guidance movement and the emergence of medicalized residential treatment facilities for children influenced the theoretical orientations of physicians treating children's behavior disorders in the United States in the 1930s. Charles Bradley and his colleagues at the Bradley Home in Rhode Island defined behavior disorders in social terms but investigated and treated misbehavior with somatic tools. The use of amphetamines and the electroencephalogram reorganized concepts of maladjustment along neurological lines, even as the research relied on the Home's social priorities. Electroencephalographic investigations especially shaped an organic concept of misbehavior. Ultimately, the somatic orientation obscured the central role of local context in Bradley Home physicians' research.