1. Abnormal Psychology
History of Inquiry

2. How do we define normalcy
How do we define normalcy? Who determines the boundaries between normal behavior and abnormal behavior?

3. Normal vs. Abnormal
Sociologists and anthropologists: Abnormal is that which deviates from society’s norms
Psychologists: Use the criterion of an individual’s well-being and maladaptiveness of behavior; in other words, deviance from society or behavior that limits one’s growth

4. History of Abnormal Behavior
Management of mental disorders held by the state and the church
Though abnormality was misunderstood and often mistreated, the “normal” individual was not much happier.
Interpretations alter based on religious, philosophical, and social practices of the times

5. Primitive to Classical Age
Stone Age and Egyptian: Remains of skulls reveal a procedure called trephining, or releasing of evil spirits
Greece, circa 500 B.C.: Pythagoras
attributed mental disease to a
disorder of the brain
- circa 460 B.C.: Hippocrates urged the use of baths, special diets, or bleeding.
* Dream analysis
- Plato ( B.C.): Focused on personality, and moral, physical, divine causes.

6. Medieval Period The Dancing Mania:
Amidst our people here is come The madness of the dance. In every town there now are some Who fall upon a trance. It drives them ever night and day, They scarcely stop for breath, Till some have dropped along the way And some are met by death.
-Straussburgh Chronicle of Kleinkawel, 1625

7. MEDIEVAL PERIOD Witchcraft: Belief in demonology Institutional Care
After the “Black Death”, depression and fear flourished.
Mission: Find all those thought to be “possessed of the Devil” and torture/execute
Institutional Care
“Bedlam”, a monastery of Saint Mary of Bethlehem in London; converted to an inhumane mental hospital in 1547

8. Renaissance to the Modern Age
Enlightened people in Europe spoke out from religion, medicine, and philosophy.
Efforts = “lights in the darkness”
Heinrich Agrippa ( ) fought against hypocrisy and the notion of demon causation
Philippe Pinel (1820s France) and Vincenzo Chiarugi (late 1700s) demanded humanization of the deranged

9. Renaissance to the Modern Age
Psychoanalysis: Janet, Breuer and Freud
Janet researched hysteria and neurosis
Josef Breuer treated hysteria with hypnosis
Freud, the “father of psychology”: developed research on dream interpretation and levels of subconscious