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Midterm prep Psych 405
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Psychophathology: Field concerned with the nature and development of abnormal: behavior, thoughts,feelings.
-Abnormal behavior: such characteristics as statistical infrequency, violation of norms, personal distress,
disability or dysfunction, and unexpectedness. Because abnormal behavior is infrequent, we refer to the
normal curve.
-Normal curve: bell shaped curve, places the majority of people in the middle as far as any particular
characteristic is concerned. Very few people fall at either extreme. An assertion that a person is normal
implies that he or she doesn’t deviate much from the average in a particular trait or behaviour pattern.
-Statistical infrequency is used explicitly in diagnosing mental retardation. Only particular infrequent
behaviors (hallucinations, deep depression) fall into the domains considered in this book.
-Another characteristic to take into account is violation of norms. Violation of norms makes abnormality
a relative concept, various forms of unusual behavior can be tolerated.
-Personal suffering (behavior is abnormal only if it creates distress and torment in the person
experiencing it).
-Disability: a dysfunction or impairment in some important area of life. It can also be a component of
abnormal behaviour.
Distress and disability are considered abnormal when they are unexpected responses to environmental
stressors.
What’s abnormal behavior? Abnormality usually determined by the presence of several characteristics
at one time such as: statistical infrequency, violation of norms, personal distress, disability or
dysfunction, unexpectedness.
Statistical Infrequency: Abnormal behavior occurs infrequently. For example, mental delay (IQ<70)
Violation of norms: Abnormal behavior violates social norms or threatens or makes anxious those
observing.
Personal Distress
Abnormal behavior creates great distress and torment in the person. This criterion fits many forms of
abnormality such as depression, but some disorders do not necessarily involve distress.
Disability or Dysfunction: Abnormal behavior is related to impairment in some important area of life
such as work or personal relationships
Exceptions exist such as:
-being short
-transvestism
Unexpectedness
Unexpected responses to environmental stressors can be considered abnormal behavior.
The study and treatment of mental disorders in Canada
There are approximately:
-3,600 practicing psychiatrists
-13,000 psychologists and psychological associates
-11,000 nurses specialize in the mental area
Non-medical practitioners usually work within hospital or agency settings on a salary or in private
practice.
Public health plan reimbursement of fees-for-service is limited to medical doctors
Most of the primary mental health care is delivered by general practitioners
Psychiatrist, psychologist- what’s the difference?
-Clinical psychologists typically have a ph.D or Psy.D degree (4-7 years grad school)
-Psychiatrist hold an MD degree and have had postgraduate training (residency) in which they receive
supervision in the practice of diagnosis and psychotherapy
History of Psychopathology
,Pre-scientific inquiry
-Events beyond the control of humankind such as eclipses, earthquakes, storms, fire, diseases were
regarded as supernatural. Behaviour that seemed outside individual control was subject to similar
interpretation. many early philosophers, theologians, and physicians believed that deviancy reflected
the displeasure of the gods or possession by demons.
Early Demonology
-Demonology: The doctrine that an evil being, such as the devil, may dwell within a person and control
his or her mind and body.
-Given that abnormal behaviour was caused by possession, treatment often involved exorcism.
Trepanning
•Involved the making of a surgical opening in a living skull by some instrument.
•Used to treat epilepsy, headaches, and psychological disorders attributed to demons.
•Thought to be introduced into the Americas from Siberia.
Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 B.C)
-Separated medicine from religion, magic, and superstition.
-Insisted that mental illnesses had natural causes so should be treated like other illnesses
-Regarded the brain as the organ of consciousness
Somatogenesis vs Psychogenesis
Hipocrates was the first to deal w mental health. Soma means body soma means beginning. Caused
from the body.
Psychogenesis: try to explain the problem from a psychological root (childhood trauma). Freud
-Hippocrates one of the earliest proponents of somatogenesis.
Somatogenesis: Hippocrates was considered one of the very earliest proponents of this notion. It means
that there’s something wrong with the soma, or physical body and it can disturb thought and action.
-Psychogenesis: the belief that a disturbance has psychological origins.
Hippocrates categorized mental disorders in 3 categories: mania, melancholia, phrenitis (brain fever).
There needed to be balance between 4 humours or fluids: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. He
thought that abnormal behavior is produced by some kind of physical imbalance or damage. This is the
only claim that did foreshadow aspects of contemporary thought.
Psychogenesis:
-Franz Anton Mesmer was an Austrian doctor that believed that hysterical disorders were caused by one
Particular attribution of a universal magnetic fluid in the body. He felt that one person could influence
the fluid of another to bring about a change in the other’s behavior.
-Josef Breuer used hypnosis to heal patients. He found that the relief and cure of symptoms seemed to
last longer if, under hypnosis, they were able to recall the precipitating event for the symptom and if
their original emotion was expressed. The experience of reliving an earlier emotional catastrophe and
releasing the emotional tension caused by suppressed thoughts about the event was called catharsis.
Bauer’s method became known as the cathartic method.
-Many Canadians are suspicious of people with psychological disorders. Their concerns have been
reinforced by incidents involving threats, violence, and other examples of frightening behavior on the
part of seriously mentally ill people, many of whom had refused to take or were no longer taking their
prescribed medications.
Psychogenesis Re-visited
•somatogenic causes dominated field of abnormal psychology until 20 th Century due in large part to
discoveries about general paresis
•but, psychogenesis still “in fashion” in countries like France and Austria.
Hippocrates’ humoral physiology
•Mental health dependent on a delicate balance among four humors, or fluids of the body
, •Imbalances and results
–blood = (sanguine) changeable temperament
–black bile = (melancholic) melancholia
–yellow bile = (choleric) irritability and anxiousness
–phlegm =(phlegmatic) sluggish and dullness
The Dark Ages and Demonology
-Churches gained in influence, papacy declared independent of the state.
-Christian monasteries replaced physicians as healers and as authorities on mental disorder.
-The monks cared for and nursed the sick
Persecution of Witches
-During the 13th and the following few centuries, major social unrest and recurrent famines and plagues
-People turned back to demonology to explain disasters.
-1484 Pope Innocent VIII exhorted European clergy to leave no stone unturned in the search for witches.
–Malleus Maleficarum: Over the next several centuries, hundreds of thousands of people accused,
tortured, and murdered.
Witchcraft and Mental Illness
•Were so-called witches suffering from schizophrenia?
–Delusion-like confessions obtained during torture
–In England, torture was not allowed, the confessions did not usually contain descriptions indicative of
delusions or hallucinations.
-From 13th century on, hospitals took over churches’ responsibility to tend to the ill.
-laws allowed dangerously insane and incompetent to be confined to hospital. and people confined
were not described as being possessed
-Early 13th century “lunacy” trials held in England.
Development of Asylums
•At the end of the 15th century very few mental hospitals in Europe but England and Scotland had 220
leprosy hospitals. Confinement began in 15th-16th centuries. Leprosariums were converted to asylums
–asylums took disturbed people and beggars, had no specific routine for their ‘inmates’
St. Mary of Bethlehem
•Founded in 1243 and devoted solely to the confinement of the mentally ill.
–Conditions were deplorable (bedlam)
–Eventually became one of London’s great (paid) tourist attractions
Moral Treatment
•Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) considered primary figure in movement for humanitarian treatment of the
mentally ill in asylums. Believed patients should be treated with dignity
Dorothea Dix
•Moral treatment was abandoned in the latter part of the nineteenth century but Dorothea Dix’s (1802–
77) efforts resurrected it
–Boston schoolteacher who taught a Sunday-school class at the local prison
Beginning of Contemporary Thought
•Return to the somatogenic views first espoused by Hippocrates
•Early system of classification established
Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926)
•created a classification system to establish the biological nature of mental illnesses.
•noticed clustering of symptoms (syndrome) which were presumed to have an underlying physical
cause,
•proposed two major groups of severe mental diseases:
–dementia praecox (early term for schizophrenia)
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