The supernatural, biological, and psychological traditions will be explored in terms of their historical importance.
1.Supernatural
Throughout history, mental illness has been attributed to a variety of supernatural
causes, including witchcraft, the gods, the movement of the stars, and possession
by evil spirits. Demonology is the idea that evil spirits can inhabit individuals and
control their minds or bodies. This is the earliest known explanation for mental
illness. In ancient times, a hole was bored into the skull of a person suffering from
mental illness in order to allow the evil spirit to leave. This primitive brain surgery,
or trephination, has been performed for thousands of years in many cultures. The
surgery was performed without anesthesia and evidence from the skulls themselves
suggest that many people survived for years after the procedure. Amazingly, even
today there is a small movement to further the use of trephination, although science
does not support its use. Demonological theories have also led to attempts to cure
mental illness through a ritual called exorcism.
2.In ancient Greece, the physician Hippocrates produced the first well-elaborated biological theories about mental illness. He believed that mental illness could be
inherited through families and could be caused by injury, anatomical abnormalities,
or disease. Five hundred years later, a Roman physician named Galen expanded on
the work of Hippocrates and created the humoral theory. He believed that the body
contained four fluids (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm) that must remain
balanced. Imbalances in these fluids, or humors, resulted in mental illness. Though
the idea of humors has long since been discarded, we now know that imbalances in
chemicals in the body can cause psychopathology.
In the mid-1800s, interest in biological explanations for mental illness began to
increase. Around this time, scientists realized that a particular set of abnormal
psychological symptoms was caused by syphilis. Later, they also discovered that
syphilis was caused by a bacterial infection. Scientists believed that all psychopathology would soon be traceable to some physical ailment. This belief had several consequences. First, the mentally ill began to be treated similarly to the physically
ill. While this resulted in more compassionate treatment, it also overwhelmed the
hospitals. Those patients who were hospitalized for mental illness often did not
receive treatment because doctors believed specific types of mental illnesses could
not be cured until their biological causes were found. Along with this, there was
an increase in biological treatments for mental illness, including drugs and shock
therapy. To this day, we are continuing to discover new biological treatments at a
rapid pace.
3.Psychological
The psychological tradition can be broken down into many smaller areas. We will
cover three of the most important historical schools of thought. These are the psychoanalytic, humanistic, and behavioral orientations.
Psychoanalytic The authors of your textbook devote much space to a discussion
of psychoanalytic theory. I want you to know that psychoanalytic theories are discussed mainly because of their historical importance, not because psychologists in
general subscribe to these theories anymore. Sigmund Freud created an expansive
body of theory. Some of it has held up to the test of time, but most of it has not.
I would say that Freud’s greatest contribution to psychology was that he fostered
interest in mental illness, which generated an explosion in research in the field.
Without Freud, psychology and psychiatry probably would have taken many more
years to become established scientific disciplines. That being said, let’s briefly review a few of the basic concepts of psychoanalytic theory.
You need to know about the three main components of Freud’s psychoanalytic
model.
These components are:
(1) the structure of the mind;
(2) the defense mechanisms; and
(3) the stages of psychosexual development.
Titany answered the question on November 29, 2021 at 12:26