The historical development of Abnormal Psychology or Psychopathology is worth studying. The progressive as well as conservative steps have contributed to a balanced view of abnormal behavior.

1. HISTORY OF ABNORMAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Fr Alex J Vellappally MSW, SUDC

2. 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

3. 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

4. Demonology, gods & magic
• Chinese, Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew
• Possession by good or evil spirits
• Primary type of treatment: exorcism

5. Early Greek Thinkers
• Hippocrates(460-377BC)
• Father of modern medicine
• Natural causation for mental diseases
• Brain pathology
• Importance of heredity
• Classified in to three- mania, melancholia and
phrenitis( brain fever)
• Role of dreams in understanding

6. Galen
• Following Hippocrates
• Doctrine of four humors
• Temperaments: Sanguine, Melancholic,
Phlegmatic, Choleric

7. Plato (429-347 BC)
• Mentally ill persons not responsible for
criminal acts
• To provide hospital care for the mentally ill
• The divine causation

8. Aristotle( 384-322)
• Lasting contribution regarding consciousness
• Wrote extensively on mental disorders
• Follows generally the views of Hippocrates

9. 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’

10. 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

11. • 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

12. • 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.

13. Exorcism and witch craft
• 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

14. • 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.

15. 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.

16. 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)

17. 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

18. • 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.”

19. 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.

20. 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

21. 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.

22. Rush and Moral Management in
America
• 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.

23. Dix and the Mental hygiene movement
• 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

24. The Military and the mentally ill
• Mental health treatment was also advanced
by military medicine
• Psychiatrists, a number of whom made great
contributions to the field of abnormal
Psychology( Emil Kraepelin and Richard Craft-
Ebbing) worked with the military
administration conducting research and
training doctors to detect mental health
problems

25. Mental Hospital care in the 20th
Century
• In the first half of 20th century, hospital care
for the mentally ill afforded very little in the
way of effective treatment.
• In 1946, Mary Jane Ward published a very
influential book, ‘The Snake Pit’ which
popularized in a movie of the same time. This
work called attention to the plight of mental
patients and helped to create concern to
provide mental health care in the community

26. • Deinstitutionalization- a movement included
vigorous efforts to close down mental
hospitals and return psychiatrically disturbed
people t the community ostensibly as a means
of providing more integrated and humane
treatment than was available in the isolated
environment of the psychiatric hospitals

27. Contemporary views of Abnormal
Behavior
1. Biological discoveries
2. The development of classification system of
mental disorders
3. The emergence of psychological causation
views
4. The experimental psychological research
developments

28. Biological discoveries
• The disciplines of Anatomy, physiology,
Neurology, Chemistry and general medicine
advanced their knowledge which led to the
identification of the biological or organic
pathology underlying many physical ailments
• The development of a Psychiatric classification
system by Kraepelin played a dominant role in the
early development of the biological view point.
His works helped to establish the importance of
brain pathology in mental disorders

29. Emergence of psychological causation
• The first major steps toward understanding
psychological factors in Mental disorders were
taken by Sigmund Freud. His ‘Psychoanalysis
'emphasized the inner dynamics of
unconscious motives
• Other clinicians have modified and revised
Freud’s theory which has thus evolved in to
new Psychodynamic perspective

30. Experimental Psychology
developments
• The end of the 19th century and the early 20th
century saw Experimental Psychology evolve
in to Clinical Psychology with the development
of clinics to study as well as intervene in
abnormal behavior
• Two major schools of learning paralleled this
development and behaviorism emerged as an
explanatory model in Abnormal Psychology

31. Conclusion
• Understanding the history of Abnormal
Psychology, its forward steps and missteps
alike, helps us understand the emergence of
modern concepts of abnormal behavior.
• Reference:
• Carson, R., Butcher, J., Mineka, S.,Hooley,J.
(2007). Abnormal Psychology and Modern
Life. Thirteenth Ed, New Delhi: Pearson
Education Inc.

32. Thank you