ABSTRACT
Then there is the long history of concern with the mentally ill. An early highlight is the Malleus Maleficarum, or “hammer for witches” (a remarkable descriptive psychiatry written in the late 15th century by two monks). While this work contains some perceptive material on psychopathology, its chief aim was to
specify criteria for diagnosing people-mostly young women (but also older wealthy widows)—as witches. It has been estimated that between 100,000 and several million individuals were put to death because, using this work as a guide, they had been branded as witches. The study of “abnormal behavior” has a long history, initially conceiving of it as various forms of “evil” in prescientific psychology, changing later to a serious kind of disease. One must mention Philippe Pinel, who pleaded late in the 18th century that people suffering from mental illness are not possessed by demons, are not incurable, and should not be morally censured but are sick and need help. Similar pleas on behalf of people afflicted with psychopathology were made by Dorothea L. Dix in the 19th century and by Clifford W. Beers early in the 20th century. There has already been occasion to refer to Kraepelin’s careful classification of the mental disorders late in the 19th century. These people and the ideas they developed would require a whole book to themselves to treat them thoroughly.
