Ch. 15 Early History of Mental Illness

Harmful Behavior

"Normal individuals possess a powerful motive to survive, and therefore behavior contrary to that motive, such as self-mutilation or suicide, is considered abnormal".

animal magnetism

A force that Mesmer and others believed is evenly distributed throughout the bodies of healthy people and unevenly distributed in the bodies of unhealthy people.

Nancy School

A group of physicians who believed that because all humans were suggestible, all humans can be hypnotized.

Hippolyte Bernheim (1840 - 1919)

A member of the Nancy school of hypnotism who believed that anything a highly suggestible patient believed would improve his or her condition.

Posthypnotic suggestion

A suggestion that a person receives while under hypnosis and acts on when he or she is again in the waking state.

Contagious magic

A type of sympathetic magic. It involves the belief that what one does to something that a person once owned or that was close to a person will influence that person.

Philippe Pinel (1745 - 1826)

Among the first, in modern times, to view people with mental illness as sick people rather than criminals, beasts, or possessed individuals. In the asylums of which he was in charge, Pinel ordered that patients be unchained and treated with kindness in a peaceful atmosphere. Pinel was also responsible for many innovations in the treatment and understanding of mental illness.

Psychotherapy

Any attempt to help a person with a mental disturbance. What all versions of psychotherapy have had in common throughout history are a sufferer, a helper, and some form of ritualistic activity.

Hippocrates (ca. 460 - 377 B.C.)

Argued that all mental and physical disorders should consist of such things as rest, proper diet, and exercise.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802 - 1887)

Caused several states (and foreign countries) to reform their facilities for treating mental illness by making them more available to those needing them and more humane in their treatment.

Lightner Witmer (1867 - 1956)

Considered to be the founder of clinical psychology.

Unrealistic Thoughts and Perceptions

If a person's beliefs or perceptions differ markedly from those considered normal at a certain time and place in history, those beliefs and perceptions are taken as signs of mental illness.

Marquis de Puysegur (1751 - 1825)

Found that placing patients in a sleeplike trance was as effective in alleviating ailments as was Mesmer's approach, which necessitated a crisis. He also discovered a number a basic hypnotic phenomena.

Auguste Ambroise Liebeault (1823 - 1904)

Founder of the Nancy school of hypnotism.

Inappropriate emotions

Inappropriate or exaggerated emotional responses have been and are standard criteria in labeling a person as mentally ill.

Pierre Janet (1859 - 1947)

Like Charcot, theorized that components of the personality, such as traumatic memories, could become dissociated from the rest of the personality and that these dissociated components are responsible for the symptoms of hysteria and for hypnotic phenomena.

Benjamin Rush (1745 - 1813)

Often called the first U.S. psychiatrist. Rush advocated the humane treatment of people with mental illness but still clung to some earlier treatments, such as bloodletting and the use of rotating chairs.

Emil Kraeplin (1856 - 1926)

Published a list of categories of mental illness in 1883. Until recent times, many clinicians used this list to diagnose mental illness. Today the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders serves the same purpose. Kraepelin was also a pioneer in the field known today as psychopharmacology.

Unpredictable behavior

Sudden shifts in one's beliefs or emotions have also traditionally been taken as signs of psychopathology,

Supernatural Model of Mental Illness

The assumption that mental illness is caused by malicious, spiritual entities entering the body or by the will of God.

Medical Model of Mental Illness

The assumption that mental illness results from such biological causes as brain damage, impaired neural transmissions, or biochemical abnormalities.

Psychological Model of Mental Illness

The assumption that mental illness results from such psychological causes as conflict, anxiety, faulty beliefs, frustration, or traumatic experience.

Natural Law

The belief prevalent in the 18th century that undesirable or sinful behavior has negative consequences such as mental or physical disease or poverty, and virtuous behavior has positive consequences such as good health and prosperity.

Sympathetic Magic

The belief that by influencing things that are similar to a person or that were once close to that person, one can influence the person.

Mental Illness

The condition that is said to exist when a person's emotions, thoughts, or behavior deviate substantially from what is considered to be normal at a certain time and place in history.

Clinical Psychology

The profession founded by Witmer, the purpose of which was to apply the principles derived from psychological research to the diagnosis and treatment of disturbed individuals.

Artificial Somnambulism

The sleeplike trance that Puysegur created in his patients. It was later called a hypnotic trance.

Posthypnotic Amnesia

The tendency for a person to forget what happens to him or her while under hypnosis.

Contagion effect

The tendency for people to be more susceptible to suggestion when in a group than when alone.

Homeopathic magic

The type of sympathetic magic involving the belief that doing something to a likeness of a person will influence that person.

Jean Martin Charcot (1825 - 1893)

Unlike most of the physicians of his day, concluded that hysteria was a real disorder. He theorized the inherited predisposition toward hysteria could become actualized when traumatic experience or hypnotic suggestion causes an idea or a complex of ideas to become dissociated from consciouness. Isolated from rational control, such dissociated ideas become powerful enough to cause the symptoms associated with hysteria, for example paralysis.

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 - 1815)

Used what he thought were his strong magnetic powers to redistribute the magnetic fields of his patients, thus curing them of their ailments.