Historic Theories of Mental Illness

While now known to be caused by a variety of physical, environmental, and biological influences, psychological disorders used to be attributed to more arcane causes throughout ancient and medieval times. These causes could include possession theories, divine intervention, witchcraft/sorcery, symptoms involving various organs such as the heart or uterus, or the imbalance of humors within a person’s body. Many of these individual theories had their own specific treatments- which ranged from seemingly practical at the time, to incredibly bizarre, to downright dangerous. While most of the following practices and theories have been outdated, several have had major influences on modern-day psychology and a very small number are still practiced.

While it is difficult the point of impossibility to chronologically order the various historic theories of mental illness, the first evidence of a procedure aimed at discovering the causes or easing the symptoms of psychological disorders can be found in trepanated skulls dating back to over 7,000 years ago (Mo, 2008). Trepanation, or the practice of creating a hole in the skull to either relieve pressure on the brain and improve brain pulsation or to release evil spirits thought to be controlling a person without damaging the underlying blood vessels, meninges, and brain, has been around since the Stone Age (Halvorson, 2011). The first skull found that bore an obvious intentional man-made hole was discovered in 1685 in Northern Europe (Mo, 2008). More skulls were later found bearing similar openings. These holes were mainly found in the parietal, occipital, and frontal bones -- rarely were they discovered in the temporal bone. This points to an early knowledge that these areas of the brain had a direct impact on behavior; because there is no evidence of

a trepanation ever being performed on someone with head trauma, it is now believed that the procedure was performed in an attempt to alter an atypical or maladaptive...