First Psychological Experiment

1. First Psychological Experiment • 7th Century, B.C. • Psmatic I, King of Egypt • Hypothesis: Egyptians are the most ancient race on earth • Experimental Design • Findings: “Becos”! • Conclusion: Phrygians are more ancient

2. Before that? • behaviour – anything • perceived as “odd”, • which could have been MHP/Disability • Explained as possession, • possibly a punishment • Cause? • An evil-doer/magician Theoretical approach = Animism • Natural world consist of demons/spirits • Different /shaman

3. Treatment? • Exorcism e.g. chants • Trepining e.g. hole in skull (n.b. evidence of effective management in South America 12c) • Ostracism

4. The Greeks • "The unexamined life is not worth living." -- Socrates • Socratic method--dialectic or careful interrogation and logical argumentation.Knowledge is drawn out by deliberate reflection on ones ideas and beliefs

5. Approach: Somatogenesis e.g. Hippocrates (Physician) • Emotional distress is NOT a punishment but has natural, biological causes (like flu) • Categories of distress formed from observation • Mania • Melancholia • Phrenitis (brain fever) • “deviance” in thinking/behaviour assumed to be due to a brain/body pathology, some ideas plausible, others bizarre • Brain is seat of consciousness • Balance of Body fluids (humors e.g. bile/phlegm) affect mental state • Movement of uterus causing “hysteria” in women • Treatment • e.g. for melancholia, aim for tranquility, sobriety, abstinence

6. Hippocrates From Blood (Sanguis) comes: sanguine, meaning "sturdy, confident, optimistic, cheerful, happy." From Yellow Bile (Bilis, Kholê) and its associations come: choler, meaning "the quality or state of being irascible";choleric, meaning "angry, irate, irascible"; bile, meaning "inclination to anger, spleen"; bilious, meaning "pevish, ill-natured"; gall, meaning "bitterness, rancor, insolence"; spleen, meaning "mingled ill will & bad temper"; and jaundiced, meaning "envy, distaste, hostility." From Phlegm (Phlegma) comes:phlegmatic, meaning "slow, stolid, cool, impassive.” From Black Bile comes:Depressed in spirits, meleconcoly And from Black Bile (Melancholia) comes: melancholic, meaning "depressed, tending to depress the spirits, irascible, sad, saddening."

7. More precise medical approaches developed, e.g. making link between being physically ill and being distressed • “the uterus does not issue forth like a wild animal [around the body disrupting functions]…it is drawn together because of stricture caused by inflammation” Galen (Physician) • Some consideration given of psychological aspects to emotional distress and treatment (psychogenesis) • People are not concerned by things but by the view they take of them • Do not let [concerns of tomorrow] disturb you…you shall meet them with the same weapons of reason as you defeated those of today • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Stoic tradition)

8. Plato Rationalist- serious contemplation can derive rational answers knowledge is innate gave rise to introspection Aristotle Empiricist- observe external causes of behavior gave rise to materialism- experience is the source of knowledge Nature vs. nuture

9. Para Psyche • Greek for “about the mind or soul.” • Better known as: De Anima • Law of association • The mind is the purposeful functioning of the nervous system.

10. Three souls • plant soul, the essence of which is nutrition.  • animal soul, which contains the basic sensations, desire, pain and pleasure, and the ability to cause motion.  • human soul.  The essence of the human soul is, of course, reason.  • existence apart from the body.

11. hmmm • “In all animals... it is the most natural function to beget another being similar to itself... in order that they attain as far as possible, the immortal and divine....  This is the final cause of every creatures natural life.”

12. hmmmm • “There are two powers in the soul which appear to be moving forces -- desire and reason.  But desire prompts actions in violation of reason... desire... may be wrong.”

13. hmmm • “Although desires arise which are opposed to each other, as is the case when reason and appetite are opposed, it happens only in creatures endowed with a sense of time. For reason, on account of the future, bids us resist, while desire regards the present; the momentarily pleasant appears to it as the absolutely pleasant and the absolutely good, because it does not see the future.”

14. hmmm • "So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim."

15. Buddha the psychologist • The Truth of Suffering, or Misery (Duhkhasatya), that life is suffering, including birth, disease, old age, and death; • . • The Truth of the Cause (Samudayasatya), that suffering is caused by desire (tr.s.n.â) and by ignorance (avidyâ), which ultimately depend on each other; • The Truth of Cessation (Nirodhasatya), that suffering can be ended if its causes, desire and ignorance, are removed; and • The Truth of the Way (Mârgasatya), which is the Middle Way, between the extremes of asceticism and indulgence, or the Eightfold Way, which is • 1. Right Knowledge (or Views), samyagdr.s.t.i, • 2. Right Resolve, samyaksan.kalpa, • 3. Right Speech, samyagvâk, • 4. Right Conduct (or Action), samyakkarma, • 5. Right Livelihood, samyagjîva, • 6. Right Effort, samyagvyâyâma, • 7. Right Mindfulness, samyaksmr.ti, and • 8. Right Meditation (or Concentration), samyaksamâdhi.

16. Confucious • self profit, profit other • Altruism…

17. Tao De Jing • "The female always gets the better of the male by stillness."

18. Yin and Yang • Yin represents everything about the world that is dark, hidden, passive, receptive, yielding, cool, soft, and feminine. Yang represents everything about the world that is illuminated, evident, active, aggressive, controlling, hot, hard, and masculine

19. The dark ages • From end of Greco-Roman period to Medieval, little developement in understanding the causes or of treatments for MHP • Scientific methods not developed • Causes for events seen as having spiritual dimension • Main Approach: • Belief in demonology • Different Behaviour interpreted as possession • Treatment • prayers, touching with relics, laying of hands

20. Still pretty dark • Western society becomes urbanised & political bureaucracy systematised • Society develops classification systems for organising people (tax, war, e.g., in UK, Doomsday Book) • Although no explanatory systems for distress and difference, Legal definitions of difference developed • UK, under Edward I (1272-1307) • Legally defined “born fools”…or those who have “intervals of lunacy and lucidity” as assessed in trials of competence

21. Treatment & Provision = • “mad are kept safe [confined, until] returned to reason” & seizure of their land either forever or for the interval of episode • Often placed in church run hospitals (e.g. “Hospital for Incurables” in Putney) • Took people who were un-well and/or destitute

22. Medevil • In context of • social upheaval (plagues/wars/famines) • lack of scientific understanding (e.g. why the plague? No concept of germ/virus) & superstition • lead to scapegoating, especially those with no voice/power • E.g. many women put on trial for witchcraft • Some possibly had psychosis, e.g. believed had flown with devils • others “transgressed moral codes” (fear over female sexuality/power/control) • most probably scapegoats for any misfortune • no “cure” only destruction • Estimates of 100,000 women executed in Europe in the period

23. The birth of Universities

24. St. Thomas 1.  The vegetative faculty, which is involved in food, drink, sex, and growth. 2.  The sensitive faculty, i.e. our senses, plus the common sense that binds sensations together. 3.  The locomotor faculty, which permits movement. 4.  The appetitive faculty, which consists of our desire and will. 5.  The intellectual faculty, i.e. thought, reason.

25. Occam’s razor • “Don’t multiply causes unnecessarily.”

26. The rebirth • In general society, some consideration of how events cause emotional distress, e.g. in Shakespeare’s plays: • Macbeth, hallucinations (banquet scene Banquo) • “Never shake thy gory locks at me” triggered by guilt over regicide/killing of Banquo • Lady Macbeth, obsessive rituals triggered by guilt (regicide) • Hamlet, psychotic depression occasioned by loss of father/ uncertainty and threat from his father’s murderers (or a “guise” so can be left alone)