Trephination, Witch Hunts and Modern Psychology

Trephination, Witch Hunts and Modern Psychology
Cheryl-Griffice Allen
515
November 22.2010

Trephination, Witch Hunts and Modern Psychology
Mental health issues have a history all the way back to Prehistoric times. Men believed that people who displayed abnormal behavior possessed evil spirits and demanded them to act as they do. The only cure for that person was to rid the evil spirit from him or her. The act of trephination, or cutting a hole into the skull, practiced by the earliest doctors to relieve the evils spirits of their possession of the body, became commonplace. This practice can still be seen in modern medicine but not for the same purpose. Today the medical professionals use trephination in cases kept for the release of epidural and subdural hematoma by a neurosurgeon to save lives.
When the Greek and Roman period arrived, a renowned scholar, Hippocrates, recognized mental illness as caused by disease and not spiritual or the supernatural. He wrote of the four humors: melancholia, dementia, hysteria, and hallucinations. He was the first to believe mental illness originates by forces outside the body. This was in direct contrast of Plato and Aristotle. Galen, also in this era, believed that mental illness was in the blood and believed that bloodletting was a cure to rid people of all forms of mental disturbances.
When the Christians arrived at an approach to abnormal behavior, mental illness became an issue of good versus evil or more predominantly, God versus Satan. The cruelty to those with mental illness was advocated and often practiced to the point of permanent disability or death. The end of this era saw the most humble beginnings of establishing mental hospitals for those that had signs of mental disturbances.
The renaissance began a whole new brutality to people displaying mental illness. The Christians called them witches, took their property, and burned them alive at the stake. Evidences show the governments did this to take their land and possessions but whatever the reason there was over 100,000 human lives burned at a stake in the name of Christianity.
The first mental institution that separated the mentally ill emerged in the early 1400s. They were crude and understaffed hospitals. The mentally ill were also housed with the dredges of society that no one else wanted to be around. They shared their housing with criminals, homeless, and severely disabled people. Treatment was cruel and inhumane, often leading to chaining, beatings, and death. These early treatments in hospitals gave birth to the word bedlam or uproar. This small word speaks loudly of the conditions the mentally ill were under.
In the late 1700s a savior of sorts had another idea for the mentally ill. Dr Philippe Pined became the chief resident in a Paris asylum named La Bizerte. Pined had the ideas that mentally disturbed people did not need the chains and cruel punishment to live out their lives. He saw them as human beings with disorders that he treated with kindness, walking, talking with a doctor and a combination of therapies he condensed into the term moral therapy. With his moral therapy treatment he saw 70% of these patients cured. However, the madness continued with the cruel and often fatal treatment in other asylums. An English Quaker named William Take started reforms in the Western areas and Dorthea Dix demanded political reform in treatment and living conditions of the mentally disturbed. She was a vital part in the establishment of 32 different state hospitals dedicated to the mentally ill.
Just as it seemed the mentally ill gained respect as a part of society and a promise of reform from cruelty, the 1940s and 1950s brought about a whole new way to mistreat them. Thousands of patients endured a surgical operation called a prefrontal lobotomy to control their actions and make them more passive. Most of these patients never regained thoughts and stayed in a vegetative state whereas others died during the procedure. Twenty years later a new class of drug, phenothiazine, became available and was extremely effective in its ability to calm severely disturbed patients down and make their lives less frenzied.
The foundations of modern psychology can be attributed to many. William Wundt founded methods and a measure of control for the mentally ill. Emil Kraepelin had an understanding of mental illnesses supported on accepted scientific ideas. Morton Prince founded the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Richard von Krafhebing began his studies in biogenic therapies. Franz Anton Mesmer began a practice on the mentally ill he called mesmerizing. The medical profession later knew this as hypnosis. Ambrose Lierbealt along with Hippolyte Bernheim created the Nancy School on the works of Mesmer. This lead to the interest of one of the most renowned psychiatrists ever celebrated. Sigmund Freud and his curiosities on the mind lead to his finding of psychoanalysis.
During the late twentieth century the recognition of deinstitutionalization was accepted and practiced. Treatment outside the confines of the hospital became dominant and adaption with therapy and medication in the general population practiced. The fear of psychological disturbances that had maimed and taken the lives of so many throughout history no longer existed. Today it is common to use outreach programs or day-treatment hospitals to mainstream patients into society.
To treat mental illness and abnormal behaviors, many types of therapies are available. A number of theorists practice cognitive therapy. The clinician talks with the patient and tries to help him or her to understand his or her views of the world and how these views affect his or her personality. They, in essence, re-teach some beliefs that the person holds onto from his or her childhood and try to reduce bias and the tainted knowledge from early in life. When the illogical thinking became organized, progress in the individual stabilizes.
Descriptive pathology is important for the psychologist/clinician in order to classify and treat mental illness. The standard guide used in assessment and treatment is the DSM-IV.
Abnormalities can fall into different model types and treatments. The biological model states mental illness is a form of some type of abnormal brain activity or disease. These abnormalities, caused by disease, heredity, accidents, or viral infections, are malfunctions in the brain. Psychotropic medications benefit some cases. In other cases neurosurgery is the answer.
The psychodynamic model states that people have abnormal behavior because they have issues he or she are unaware of that influences their present behaviors. Sigmund Freud was the founding father of this model and it is in high regard in the psychiatric world today.
The sociocultural model seeks to explain abnormal behavior as a societal problem that each individual must face. This model deals with cultural norms, social networks of the individual, and how he or she are affected by him or her and cultural and religious beliefs of the family and the individual.
Clinicians have come a very long way in diagnosing and treating abnormal behaviors and mental illnesses. Lives were lost because of ignorance or religious persecution. Modern psychology and its understanding prove to help those in this generation and will continue with future generations.

References
Butcher, J. N., Mineka, S., & Hooley, J. M. (2010). Abnormal Psychology. Boston, MA: Pearson, Allyn, & Bacon.
Slade, J. A. (1929 Jan). Abnormal Psychology and the History. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 23(4), 513-514.
Rothman, D. J. (1990). The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and disorder in the New republic (Rev ed.). Boston, MA: Little Brown.

References: Butcher, J. N., Mineka, S., & Hooley, J. M. (2010). Abnormal Psychology. Boston, MA: Pearson, Allyn, & Bacon. Slade, J. A. (1929 Jan). Abnormal Psychology and the History. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 23(4), 513-514. Rothman, D. J. (1990). The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and disorder in the New republic (Rev ed.). Boston, MA: Little Brown.