Roots of Abnormal Psychology
Abnormal Psychology
The recognition that mental disorders exist goes all the way back to primitive societies (Hansell and Damour, 2008, p. 26). Ancient skulls with holes drilled into them suggests animistic cultures practiced trephination, which entails drilling holes into the heads of living persons to provide an escape route for unhealthy spirits. Societies that believed in animism, or the existence of a powerful spirit world, would sometimes use trephination to open a way for spirits to leave the body of afflicted persons. Exorcism was practiced for the same purpose.
Ancient Greece also recognized the existence of mental disorders, but the approach towards treatment was a bit less barbaric (Hansell and Damour, 2008, p. 28-29). The famous Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived between 460 and 377 B.C.E., believed that all diseases came from an imbalance between four humours: blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile. An imbalance in these humours could produce mood instability, lethargy, depression, aggression, or anxiety.
More recent efforts to diagnose and treat mental disorders created a division within the ranks of physicians. On one side were those who believed all mental disorders could ultimately be traced to a biological cause, while the other side believed the causes were primarily psychological (Hansell and Damour, 2008, p. 33-34). The German neurologist Richard von Kraft-Ebing made the connection in 1897 between what was then called general paresis to untreated syphilis infections,...
By comparison, researchers have recently shown that psychosocial dwarfism is caused by severe emotional deprivation during childhood. This division in how abnormal psychology is approached has largely disappeared today and most consider both views valid.
Throughout time societies have therefore been faced with the task of diagnosing and treating those who have succumbed to mental illness. The local physician or shaman may have relied on some of the same criteria in use today, such as help seeking, irrational and/or dangerous behavior, deviance, emotional distress, and significant impairment, but these diagnostic criteria remain largely inaccurate and unreliable even today. The shaman's task would have been complicated by the existence of predisposing conditions, also called diathesis, and whether a triggering event or stressor could be identified. In addition, the symptoms were probably occasionally subtle and there could have been a biological etiology or contribution.
The Scientific Method and Abnormal Psychology
Two of the main principles of scientific investigation are reliability and validity (Hansell and Damour, 2008, p. 73-74). Reliability implies the same result would be obtained if an experiment were repeated, whereas validity implies the experimental results mean what we think they mean. Reliable and valid diagnostic criteria for psychopathology would therefore be able to arrive at the same diagnosis regardless of who performs the task…
