HISTORY OF

ABNORMAL
PSYCHOLOGY
 PHASES

• Stone Age
• Demonology, gods and magic
• Early Greek thinkers
• Later Greek thinkers
• Middle Ages
• Humanitarian approaches
• Mental Hospital Care by 20th century
• Contemporary developments
Stone Age (half a million years ago)

• Trephination- chipping away

an area of the skull with
crude stone instruments to
make a hole letting the evil
spirit in head to escape
through it.
 Demonology, gods & magic

• Chinese, Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew

• Possession by good or evil spirits
• Primary type of treatment: exorcism -
the expulsion or
attempted expulsion
of a supposed evil
spirit from a person
 Early Greek Thinkers

• Hippocrates(460-377BC)
• Father of modern medicine
• Natural causation for
mental diseases
• Brain pathology
• Importance of heredity
He classified mental disorders in to
three - mania, melancholia and
phrenitis ( brain fever).
Mania - mental illness marked by
periods of great excitement or
euphoria, delusions, and over
activity.
Melancholia - a mental condition
marked by persistent depression and
ill-founded fears.
Phrenitis - means an inflammation
of the brain, or of the meninges of
the brain, attended with acute fever
and delirium. 
 Galen
Follower of Hippocrates
 Doctrine of four humors
Temperaments: Sanguine,
Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Choleric.
 Doctrine of the four humors

Blood (Sanguine)
•Healthy, Cheerful, Optimistic
•Too much causes insomnia or delirium
Black bile (Melancholia)
•Causes depression
Phlegm (Phlegmatic)
•Apathetic, sluggish, calm under stress
Yellow bile (Choleric)
•Hot tempered
 Plato (429-347 BC)

 Mentally ill persons not responsible

for criminal acts
• To provide hospital care for the
mentally ill
• The divine causation.
 Aristotle( 384-322)
•
• Lasting contribution regarding
consciousness
• Wrote extensively on mental disorders
• Follows generally the views of Hippocrates
 Middle Ages
the middle east

• Islamic countries of the middle east

continued
the scientific aspects of Greek tradition
• The first mental hospital was established in
Bagdad in 792 A D
• Avicenna of Arabia the outstanding person
• Also known as the prince of physicians
• Wrote the book ‘Canon of Medicine’
 Middle ages
Europe
• Largely devoid of scientific thinking and
humane treatment for the mentally disturbed
• Supernatural explanations of the causes of
mental illness grew in popularity.
• Two events of the times: mass madness and
exorcism.
• Mass madness: the widespread occurrence of
behavior disorders that were apparently cases
of hysteria
• Whole groups of people were affected
simultaneously
• Dancing manias ( epidemics of raving,
jumping,
dancing and convulsions) were reported as
early as the 10th century
• Tarantism: a disorder that included an
uncontrollable impulse to dance that was
often attributed to the bite of the southern
European tarantula or wolf spider
This dancing mania later spread to Germany and
to the rest of Europe where it was known as Saint
Vitus’s dance.
• Isolated rural areas were also afflicted with
outbreaks of lycanthropy- a condition in which
people believed themselves to be possessed by
wolves and imitated their behavior
• Today so called mass hysteria occurs occasionally,
the affliction usually mimics some type of
physical disorder such as fainting spells or
convulsive movements.
 Exorcism and witchcraft
• Management of the mentally disturbed was left
largely to the clergy, monasteries served as refuges
and places of confinement.
• During the early part of the medieval period the
mentally disturbed were for the most part, treated
with considerable kindness
• Exorcism- symbolic acts that are performed to drive
out the devil from persons believed to be possessed.
• It was usually performed by the gentle laying of
hands.
Such methods were often joined with vaguely
understood medical treatments, derived mainly
from Galen.
• It had long been thought that during the middle
ages, many mentally disturbed people were
accused of being witches and thus were punished
and often killed.
• But several more recent interpretations have
questioned the truthfulness of such accusations.
 Toward Humanitarian approaches

• During the latter part of the middle ages

and the early Renaissance, scientific
questioning reemerged and a movement
called humanism began.
• With this the traditional understanding
and therapeutic treatment of mental
disorders began to be challenged.
 Paracelsus(1490-1541)

• Swiss physician, insisted that the dancing mania

was not a possession, but a form of disease that
should be treated as such.
• Formulated the idea of psychic causes for mental
illness and advocated treatment by ‘bodily
magnetism’ later called hypnosis.
• although he rejected demonology, his view of
abnormal behavior ‘ caused by astral influences.
Believed that the moon excreted a supernatural
influence on human brain (lunatic, lunacy)
 Johann Weyer(1515-1588)

German physician and writer

• Deeply disturbed by the imprisonment, torture
and burning of people accused of witchcraft
• Published ‘Deception of Demons’ in 1563 which
contains a step by step rebuttal of the Malleus
Maleficarum, a witch hunting hand book
published in 1486 and a call for humane
consideration towards those sick persons accused
for witchcraft.
 Karl Jaspers 1913

One of the first physicians to specialize in mental

disorders
• Can be rightly called the founder of modern
Psychopathology.
• He was scorned by his peers and his works
banned by the church
• The clergy like St Vincent de Paul(1576-1660)
also declared “ Mental disease is no different to
bodily disease and Christianity demands of the
humane and powerful to protect, and the skillful
to relieve the one as well as the other.”
The establishment of early asylums
and shrines
• From the 16th century on special
institutions called asylums or places of
refuge for the mentally ill were established in
many countries
• E.g.: the Valencia mental hospital founded
by Father Juan Pilberto Jofre, Bedlam,
instituted by Henry VIII in London, the San
Hippolito established in Mexico, La Maison
de Charentone in Paris.
 Humanitarian Reforms

• By the late 18th century, most

mental hospitals in Europe and
America were in great need of
reform
• Philippe Pinel(1745-1826) in
France
• Pinel’s experiment in 1792 had
revolutionary effects on the
betterment of patients.
William Tuke(1732-1822)

Established the York Retreat in England,

a pleasant country house where mental
patients lived, worked and rested in a
kindly, religious atmosphere. this retreat
represented the culmination of noble
battle against the brutality, ignorance
and indifference of Tuke’s times.
• Benjamin Rush(1745-1813) the founder
of American Psychiatry, also one of the
signers of the Declaration of
Independence, encourages more humane
treatment of the mentally ill
• Moral management – a wide ranging
method of treatment that focused on a
patient’s social, individual and
occupational needs.
Dorothea Dix(1802-1887) advocated a method of
treatment that focused almost exclusively on the
physical wellbeing of hospitalized mental
patients.
She is credited with establishing 32 mental
hospitals, directed the opening of two large
institutions in Canada, and completely reformed
the asylum system in Scotland and many other
countries
END