1. CHAPTER 2
Historical and Contemporary Views of
Abnormal Behavior

2. Ancient views of abnormal behavior
• Possession by spirits, demons, or gods
• Ancient treatments:
• Trepination (Stone Age)
• Surgery and prayers (ancient Egypt)
• Variations on exorcisms

3. Ancient Greece and Rome
• Hippocrates (460-377
B.C.E.)
• Mental disorders have physical
causes
• “humors”-four types of body
fluids
• Basic classifications of mental
disorders
• Galen (130-200 C.E.)
• Refined physical causes of
mental disorders

4. Ancient China
• Chung Ching (200 C.E.)
• Built on traditional Chinese concepts of physical
balance
• Physical and mental health interrelated

5. Middle Ages (500-1500 C.E.)
• Middle East
• Scientific approach maintained
• Mental hospitals established
• Europe
• Focus returns to supernatural
causes
• Exorcisms and witch hunts
• China
• Shift to supernatural causes

6. Humanitarian Approaches: Europe
• Europe (approx 1500-1800)
• Return to scientific view
• Early asylums- terrible conditions
• Prisons
• Pinel (1792)
• Improved conditions in Paris hospital

7. Humanitarian Approaches: America
• Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)
• Mental Hygiene movement
• Humane hospitals
• Clifford Beers (1876-1943)
• Publicized problems with
hospitals

8. Deinstitutionalization
• 1950’s-1970’s
• Psychoactive medications
• Treatment in community
• Problems: insufficient community resources

9. Contemporary views
• Development of mental disorders classification
system
• Kraepelin (1856-1926)
• Dementia praecox
• Manic depression
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)
• Biological discoveries
• Psychological causation
• Experimental psychological research