A Brief History of Abnormal Psychology

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A Brief History of Abnormal Psychology
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Really Olden Days

• 10000 3000 BC Prehistoric Times
• Trephining evidence
• Wounds show healing on some
• What might this technique indicate about the
  beliefs of the society?
• Still in practice today (just not in our
  society.thankfully)

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Very Olden Days

• 1800 1700 BC Mesopotamia
• Hammurabis time
• Legal ramifications for health workers
• If your services failed to help, you lost
  something
• Surgeons who couldnt cure lost hands
• Predominantly blamed spirits, gods, ghosts for
  disease
• Often one spirit blamed for a particular dilemma
• 800 BC to 1000 AD Greeks and Romans
• More scientific
• Mysticism remained a common view

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Very Olden Days continued

• Hippocrates
• Humours of the body
• Black Bile melancholic sadness
• Yellow Bile choleric irritable and anxious
• Phlegm phlegmatic unemotional
• Blood sanguine unstable and shifty moods
• How would you treat disorders of humours?
• Many critics disagreed
• Many started calling for more humanitarian care
  for mentally ill

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The Dark Ages in Europe from 300 to 1500 AD

• Almost no scientific advances
• Lots of sorcery, devil possession and other
  stigmatizing views
• Muslim world grows to be way more compassionate
  toward mentally ill than religious people in
  Europe
• St. Mary of Bethlehem in London
• Started housing mentally ill
• Became overcrowded
• Spectator sport

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Still in the Dark

• More witch hunts
• Many at the hands of the church
• Most hold nonscientific mystical views
• Scientific types not able to hold sway over church

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17th 19th Century

• Continued poor treatment at the hands of many
• Mesmer
• Forces at play in our bodies
• Magnetic fields explain our imbalances
• Magnets used to correct imbalances
• Success was as stable as that from the doctors
• Why?

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Reformers in the 18th Century

• Pinel at La Bicêtre
• Beating of patients outlawed
• Continued reforms from before his time
• Discharges happen
• Tuke in rural England
• Rest and peace
• Rush in US
• Medical college in Pennsylvania
• Bloodletting, purging, and terrifying were useful
  tools
• Dix in US
• Schoolteacher
• 32 state hospitals started

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Reformers in the 19th Century

• Charcot
• Hypnosis in Paris
• Kraepelin
• Categorization of disorders
• Precursor to DSM
• And then came Freud