THE HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES ON
ABNORMAL
PSYCHOLOGY

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY the scientific study of

psychological disorders
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER or abnormal
behavior is a psychological dysfunction within
an individual that is associated with distress or
impairment in functioning and a response that is
not typical or culturally expected
PSYCHOLOGICAL DYSFUNCTION refers a
breakdown in cognitive, emotional, or behavioral
functioning
PERSONAL DISTRESS impairment; being upset
ATYPICAL/NOT CULTURALLY ACCEPTED
violation of social norms; deviant

DSM-IV-TR contains the current listing of

criteria for psychological disorders
ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR describes behavioral,
psychological, or biological dysfunctions that are
unexpected in their cultural context and
associated with present distress and impairment in
functioning, or increased risk of suffering, death,
pain, or impairment
SPECIALLY TRAINED PROFESSIONALS:
Clinical psychologist
Counseling psychologist
Psychiatrist
Psychiatric social workers

Psychiatric nurses
Marriage and family therapist
Mental health counselors

SCIENTIST-PRACTITIONER mental health

professionals who take a scientific approach to
their clinical work

DSM - 5 Definition - 2013

A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically

significant disturbance in an individuals cognition, emotional
regulation or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the
psychological, biological, or developmental processes
underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually
associated with significant distress or disability in social,
occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or
culturally appropriate response to a common stress or loss,
such as death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder.
Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual)
and conflicts that are primarily between individuals and
society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or
conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as
described above.
DSM-5, p. 20.

Clinical Description represents the unique

combination of behaviors, thoughts and feelings
that make up a specific disorder.
Clinical refers both to the types of problems
or disorder that you would find in the clinic or
hospital and to the activities connected with
assessment and treatment
Important function : to specify what makes the
disorder different from normal behavior or
from other disorders

presents a traditional shorthand way of indicating

why the person came to the clinic; describing the
presenting problems is the first step in determining
clinical description

Prevalence (of the disorder) figure on how many

people in the population as a whole have the
disorder
Incidence (of the disorder) statistics on how many
new cases occur during a given period, such as a
year
Course means individual pattern
= chronic tend to last a long time, sometimes a
lifetime
= episodic the individual is likely to recover
within a few months only to suffer a
recurrence of the disorder at a later
time; the pattern may repeat
throughout a persons life

= time-limited meaning the disorder will

improve without treatment in a
relatively short period
Onset the beginning of the disorder
= acute meaning that they begin suddenly
= insidious develops gradually over an extended
period
Prognosis the anticipated course of a disorder
= the prognosis is good meaning the individual
will probably recover
= the prognosis is guarded meaning the probable
outcome doesnt look good

Dimensions of the ScientistScientist-Practitioner Model

Figure 1.3
Three major categories make up the study and discussion of psychological

disorders.

Clinical Description

Begins with the Presenting Problem

Description Aims to
Distinguish clinically significant dysfunction from common
human experience

Describe Prevalence and Incidence of Disorders

Describe Onset of Disorders

Acute vs. insidious onset

Describe Course of Disorders

Episodic, time-limited, or chronic course

Other features (e.g. age, developmental stage,

ethnicity, race)

Add: Subtypes and Specifiers DSM 5

Causation,Treatment, and Outcome

What Factors Contribute to the Development

of Psychopathology?
Study of etiology

How Can We Best Improve the Lives of People

Suffering From Psychopathology?
Study of treatment development
Includes pharmacologic, psychosocial, and/or
combined treatments

How Do We Know That We Have Alleviated

Psychological Suffering?
Study of treatment outcome - Evidence Based
Treatment

Limited in specifying actual causes of disorders

Developmental psychology study of changes

in behavior overtime
Developmental psychopathology study of
changes in abnormal behavior
Life-span developmental psychopathology
a field that is relatively new but expanding rapidly
which deals with the study of abnormal behavior
across the entire age span
Etiology or the study of origins, has to do with
why a disorder begins (what causes it) and
includes biological, psychological, and social
dimensions

Historical Conceptions of Abnormal Behavior

Major Psychological Disorders Have Existed

In all cultures
Across all time periods

The Causes and Treatment of Abnormal

Behavior Varied Widely
Across cultures
Across time periods

As particularly as a function of prevailing paradigms

or world views

Three Dominant Traditions Include:

Supernatural, Biological, and Psychological

Historical Models of Behaviour

Supernatural
Biological
Psychological

Supernatural

Deviant Behavior as a Battle

of Good vs. Evil

Deviant behavior was

believed to be caused by
demonic possession,
witchcraft, sorcery
Suggested that it was done to
release demons possessing
the victim
Technique = trephination
still done today to relieve
pressure of fluids on the
brain.

The Moon and the Stars

Paracelsus and lunacy

3000BCE evidence of
ancient surgical techniques in
human skulls. Holes cut while
person was still alive and
showed healing survived!

Treatments

Exorcism: various religious rituals to rid the victim of

evil spirits.
Torture to make the bodies uninhabitable
Shaving the pattern of a cross in the hair of the
victims head
Securing sufferers to a wall near the front of a church
for mass
Hanging people over a pit full of snakes to scare the
evil spirits out of the bodies
Shock treatments (ice cold water dunkings)

Supernatural today

The supernatural tradition in

psychopathology still exists today,
although it is restricted to small religious
sects and in some developing countries.

Biological
Abnormal Behavior as a
Physical Disease
Hippocrates (460-377BC)
father of modern
medicine.
Believed that
psychological disorders
might be caused by brain
pathology or head trauma
and could be influenced
by heredity.
Considered brain as seat
of wisdom, consciousness,
intelligence and emotion.
Logically concluded
disorders involved with
these functions are
located in the brain.

Galen (129(129-198AD)
Roman physician
adopted and
further develop
Hippocrates ideas
Humoral Theory
of disorders

Galens Theory

The belief that normal brain functioning was related to

four bodily fluids or humors:
Blood/Sanguine (came from the heart link to
cheerful/optimistic)
Black bile/Melancholer (from the spleen link to
depression)
Yellow bile/Choler (from the liver link to hot
temper)
Phlegm (from the brain like to apathy)
Physicians believed that disease resulted from too much
or too little of one of the humors; e.g. >black bile =
melancholia (depression)
Theory perhaps the first to associate psychological
disorders with chemical imbalance.

Treatments
Excesses of one or more humors were
treated by regulating the environment to
increase or decrease heat, dryness,
moisture, or cold, depending on which
humor was out of balance as each humor
was related to either heat, dryness,
moisture or cold.
Bleeding/Bloodletting: a carefully measured
amount of blood removed from the body,
often with leeches.
Induce vomiting

The 19th Century

General Paresis (Syphilis) and the Biological

Link With Madness
Associated with several unusual psychological and
behavioral symptoms

Pasteur discovered the cause A bacterial

microorganism
Led to penicillin as a successful treatment
Bolstered the view that mental illness = physical
illness and should be treated as such

John Grey and the Reformers

John Grey - 1850s: influential American

psychiatrist
Believed insanity was always due to physical
causes, therefore mentally ill patients should
be treated as physically ill.
Hospital conditions grew.
Took almost 140 years before community
mental health movement succeeded in
deinstitutionalization

The Psychological Tradition

The Rise of Moral Therapy

Involved more humane treatment of institutionalized
patients
Encourage and reinforced social interaction

Proponents of Moral Therapy

Dorothea Dix
Philippe Pinel and Jean-Baptiste Pussin
William Tuke followed Pinels lead in England

Reasons for the Falling Out of Moral Therapy

Emergence of Competing Alternative Psychological

Models

Treatment

1920s-now: electric shock, brain surgery,

effects of drugs (e.g. insulin shock
therapy)

HISTORY OF ABNORMAL
PSYCHOLOGY

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

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

Demonology, gods & magic

Chinese, Greek, Egyptian and Hebrew
Possession by good or evil spirits
Primary type of treatment: exorcism

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

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

Plato (429(429-347 BC)

Mentally ill persons not responsible for

criminal acts
To provide hospital care for the mentally
ill
The divine causation

Aristotle( 384384-322)
Lasting contribution regarding
consciousness
Wrote extensively on mental disorders
Follows generally the views of
Hippocrates

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

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

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

This dancing mania later spread to Germany

and to the rest of Europe where it was
known as Saint Vituss 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.

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

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.

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.

Paracelsus(1490--1541)
Paracelsus(1490
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)

Johann Weyer
Weyer(1515
(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

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.

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.

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
Pinels experiment in 1792 had
revolutionary effects on the betterment
of patients

William Tuke
Tuke(1732
(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 Tukes times.

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 patients
social, individual and occupational needs.

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

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

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

Deinstitutionalizationa
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

Contemporary views of Abnormal

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

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

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
Freuds theory which has thus evolved in
to new Psychodynamic perspective

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

Conclusion

Understanding the history of Abnormal

Psychology, its forward steps and missteps
alike, helps us understand the emergence
of modern concepts of abnormal
behavior.

Thank you !!!!