Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T00:02:27.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The importance of the social and intellectual contexts in a discussion of the history of the concept of psychosis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

M. Dominic Beer
M. Dominic Beer*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, UMDS (Guy's), Guy's Hospital, London
*
2Address for correspondence: Dr M. Dominic Beer, Department of Psychiatry, UMDS (Guy's), Guy's Hospital, London SE1 9RT.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

This paper shows that, throughout its 150 year history, the concept of ‘psychosis’ has not been static, but has reflected the intellectual and social contexts in which it has been employed. Initially the concept reflected the Romantic psychiatrists' emphasis on the whole personality. With the advent of materialism the concept was applied to all mental disorders. Because of the claims for organic cerebral findings in dementia praecox, it was described by Meyer as fitting the disease concept, with characteristic pathology, symptomatology, course and prognosis. However, the different social milieux of patients being treated by psychiatrists such as Kraepelin and Bonhoeffer led to different emphases regarding the aetiology of the psychoses. In the later twentieth century the influence of urbanization in Europe and Africa and also the rise of Nazism led to changes in relation to the use of the concept of psychosis.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , March 1995 , pp. 317 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This article is based on a paper given by the author at the Second Triennial Congress of the European Association for the History of Psychiatry, in London. August 1993.

References

Alzheimer, A. (1910). Die diagnostischen Schwierigkeiten in der Psychiatrie. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 1, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayle, A. L. J. (1822). Traité des maladies du cerveau et des membranes. Gabon: Paris. Quoted in Pichot, P. (1994). Nosological models in psychiatry. British Journal of Psychiatry 164, 232–240.Google Scholar
Beer, M. D. (1993). Psychosis: A History of the Concept. M.D. thesis, University of London.Google Scholar
Beer, M. D. (1995). Psychosis: from mental disorder to disease entity. History of Psychiatry (in the press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrios, G. E. (1987). Historical aspects of psychoses: 19th century issues. British Medical Bulletin 43, 484–498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berrios, G. E. & Beer, M. D. (1994). Unitary psychosis: a conceptual history. History of Psychiatry 5, 13–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berrios, G. E. & Hauser, R. (1988). The early development of Kraepelin's ideas on classification. Psychological Medicine 18, 813–822.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bonhoeffer, K. (1909). Zur Frage der exogenen Psychosen. Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie 32, 499–505.Google Scholar
Cocks, G. (1985). Psychotherapy in the Third Reich. The Goering Institute. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford.Google Scholar
Faergeman, P. M. (1963). Psychogenic Psychoses. A Description and Follow-up of Psychoses following Psychological Stress. Butterworth: London.Google Scholar
Feuchtersleben, E. von (1845). Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde. Carl Gerold: Wien. (Translated by Lloyd, H. E. and Babington, B. G., see below.)Google Scholar
Feuchtersleben, E. von. (1847). Principles of Medical Psychology. Sydenham Society: London. (Translated by Lloyd, H. E. and Babington, B. G..)Google Scholar
Fluegel, F. (1937–1938). Ueber die Verteilung der endogenen Psychosen in Deutschland. Zentralblatt für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 87, 709–710.Google Scholar
Gaupp, R. (1939). Die Lehren Kraepelins für die heutige Psychiatrie. Zentralblatt für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 165, 47–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griesinger, W. (1843). Ueber psychische Reflexactionen. Archiv für Physiologische Heilkunde 2, 76–113.Google Scholar
Gruhle, H. W. (1932). Geschichtliches. In Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten, vol. IX, part 5 (ed. Bumke, O.), pp. 1–30. Springer: Berlin.Google Scholar
Guinness, E. A. (1992). Patterns of mental illness in the early stages of urbanisation. British Journal of Psychiatry 160, supplement 16.Google Scholar
Kahlbaum, K. (1863). Die Gruppierung der psychischen Krankheiten und die Einteilung der Seelenstoerungen. Kafemann: Danzig.Google Scholar
Kahlbaum, K. (1874). Die Katalonie oder das Spannungsirresein. Eine klinische Form psychischer Krankheit. Hirschwald: Berlin.Google Scholar
Kindt, H. (1974). Zur Entstehung und Entwicklung des Psychosebegriffes. Fortschritte der Neurologie 42, 453–464.Google Scholar
Kleist, K. (1936). Die Gehirnpathologie in ihrer Bedeutung für Neurologie und Psychiatrie. Zentralblatt für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 82, 685–690.Google Scholar
Kleist, K. (1960). Schizophrenic symptoms and cerebral pathology. Journal of Mental Science 106, 246–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kleist, K. (1987). Alogical thought disorder: an organic manifestation of the schizophrenic psychological deficit. In The Clinical Roots of the Schizophrenia Concept. Translations of Seminal European Contributions on Schizophrenia (first published in German in 1930) (ed. Cutting, J. and Shepherd, M. 1987), pp. 75–78. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.Google Scholar
Koeppe, , (1878). Ueber Reflexpsychosen. Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie 34, 259–260.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1896). Psychiatrie Ein Lehrbuch für Studirende und Aerzte, 5th edition; 6th edition (1899); 8th edition (1909–1915); vol. 1. Allgemeine Psychiatrie (1909). Barth: Leipzig.Google Scholar
Kraepelin, E. (1987). Memoirs (translated from the German by Wooding-Deane, C.). Springer: Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langfeldt, G. (1939). The Schizophreniform Stales. A Katamnestic Study based on Individual Re-examinations. Munksgaard: Copenhagen; Oxford University Press and Milford: London.Google Scholar
Leff, J. (1988). Psychiatry Around the Globe. A Transcultural View. The Royal College of Psychiatrists/Gaskell: London.Google Scholar
Leonhard, K. (1979). The Classification of the Endogenous Psychoses (translated by Berman, R.), 5th edn.Irvington Publishers: New York.Google Scholar
Mechler, A. (1965). Über den Begriff der Psychose. Jahrbuch der Psychologie und Psychotherapie 12, 67–74.Google Scholar
Meyer, A. (1901). ‘Psychosis’. In Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. II (ed. Jastrow, J. and Baldwin, J. M.), pp. 392–394. Macmillan: London.Google Scholar
Meyer, J. -E. (1988). The fate of the mentally ill in Germany during the Third Reich. Psychological Medicine 18, 575–581.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pichot, P. (1982). The diagnosis and classification of mental disorders in French-speaking countries: background, current views and comparison with other nomenclatures. Psychological Medicine 12, 475–492.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pichot, P. (1984). The French approach to psychiatric classification. British Journal of Psychiatry 144, 113–118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A., Korten, A., Ernberg, G., Anker, M., Cooper, J. E. & Day, R. (1986). Early manifestations and first contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. Psychological Medicine 16, 909–928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schneider, K. (1933). Psychopathie und Psychose. Nervenarzt 7, 337–344.Google Scholar
Strömgren, E. (1989). The development of the concept of reactive psychoses. In Psychiatric Diagnosis: Nosological, Biological and Psychological Aspects (ed. Guimon, J., Berrios, G. E. and Mezzich, J. E.), pp. 47–50. British Journal of Psychiatry 154, supplement 4.Google Scholar
Weindling, P. (1992). Psychiatry and the Holocaust. Psychological Medicine 22, 1–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wernicke, C. (1899). Die Klassifikation der Psychosen. Nach einem in der medicinischen Section der vaterländischen Gesellschaft zu Breslau gegebenen vortrag. Schlettersche Buchhandlung: Breslau.Google Scholar
Wernicke, C. (1900). Grundriss der Psychiatrie in Klinischen Vorlesungen. Thieme: Leipzig.Google Scholar
Westphal, C. (1882). Ein Fall von scheinbarer Reflexpsychose. Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 12, 525–530.Google Scholar
Wimmer, A. (1916). Psykogene Sindssygdomsformer. In St Hans Hospital 1816–1916 Jubilee Publication, pp. 85–219. Gad: Copenhagen. Quoted in Faergeman, P. M. (1963). Psychogenic Psychoses: A Description and Follow-up of Psychosis following Psychological Stress. Butterworth: London.Google Scholar
Zeller, E. A. von (1840). Zweiter Bericht über die Wirksamkeit der Heilanstalt Winnenthal 1.3.1837–29.2.1840. Beilage zum Medizinischen Correspondenzblatt des Württembergischen ärztlichen Vereins X, 17.Google Scholar