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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.
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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

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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.

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