Understanding Abnormal Behavior - Cengage Learning

2 Chapter 1: Abnormal Behavior
5. Never contribute to society
6. Dangerous
IV. Historical perspective on abnormal behavior
A. Prehistoric and ancient beliefs
1. Trephining: chipping away portion of skull
2. Exorcism: prayers, drugs, starvation
B. Naturalistic explanations (Greco-Roman thought)
1. Hippocrates: brain pathology, classification
2. Galen: role of brain and nervous system
C. Reversion to superstition (the Middle Ages)
1. Dark Ages: sinfulness
2. Mass madness (thirteenth century): tarantism, lycanthropy
3. Witchcraft (fifteenth through seventeenth centuries)
a) Related to church under attack
b) Pope Innocent VIII’s papal decree (1484) to identify and exterminate witches
c) Although some witches may have been mentally ill, most were not
D. Rise of humanism (the Renaissance)
1. Emphasizes human welfare
2. Johann Weyer challenges notion of witchcraft (1563)
E. Reform movement (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
1. Moral treatment movement (Pinel in France, Tuke in England)
2. American reformers
a) Benjamin Rush insists on respect and dignity for patients
b) Dorothea Dix campaigns for mental hospitals
c) Clifford Beers exposes cruel treatment
V. Causes: early viewpoints
A. The biological viewpoint
1. Emil Kraepelin observes syndromes
2. Emphasis on brain pathology
3. Discovery of organic basis to general paresis
B. The psychological viewpoint
1. Mesmerism and hypnotism
a) Anton Mesmer: treatment of hysteria; assumptions discredited, but spur debate
about psychogenic nature of disorders
b) Hypnotism
2. The Nancy School
a) Jean-Martin Charcot: hypnosis produces and removes hysteric symptoms
b) Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud: the cathartic method
VI. Contemporary trends in abnormal psychology
A. The drug revolution
B. Prescription privileges for psychologists
C. Managed health care
1. Health care costs in the U.S. have exploded
2. Managed health care: industrialization of health care
3. Fear of psychologists: decisions made for business reasons, not health reasons
D. Appreciation for research
E. Diversity and multicultural psychology
1. Social conditioning
2. Cultural values and influences
3. Sociopolitical influences
4. Bias in diagnosis
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