ABSTRACT
As a means of providing a conceptual framework for a systematic discussion of psychoanalysis, we begin with an overview of the history of attitudes and ideas concerning psychopathology including pre-Hippocratic mystical and surgical approaches to the treatment of pathological behavior. Thereafter, we present Hippocrates’ more holistic approach to the treatment of psychopathology. Our discussion of the history of psychopathology then progresses through the Middle Ages and the reemergence of practices reminiscent of pre-Hippocratic belief systems along with a discussion of the emergence of the first mental asylums, which began soon after the Middle Ages. With the institutionalization of the mentally ill there also developed the first systematic study and categorization of types of psychopathological behavior leading to two divergent theoretical views of the etiology of psychopathology, namely, the psychic view and the somatic view.
