Interventions in life

Eugenic thought and action patterns were strongly present in Switzerland at the beginning of the 20th century. Until well into the 1930s, Switzerland played a pioneering role in the implementation of eugenically motivated measures compared to other countries. Current research on eugenics mainly focuses on psychiatry. The relationship between welfare authorities and eugenics has hardly been examined so far, even though the interplay of welfare, medicine, and psychiatry intensified the power dynamics on the side of professionals and the dependency on the side of those affected. The core of this book consists of case analyses. These are case stories in which professionals from welfare and psychiatry intervened in the lives of individuals. They tell of people who fell under the control or treatment of experts during existential crises.