ABSTRACT

Psychiatric illness seems intrinsic to – and a necessary part of – being Homo sapiens, so it is not surprising that there are descriptions of abnormal behaviour, and even of symptoms resembling schizophrenia, in the earliest written fragments of Egypt, India and Babylon. Some evolutionary theorists consider psychosis to be inextricably linked to the genetic mutation(s) for our enlarged frontal lobe, with its unique capacity for memory and imagination. A history of psychiatry has to understand therefore how ‘mental’ symptoms – presentations of madness, sadness, foolishness, strangeness – were understood in all societies and accepted, or not, and what was done, or not, to help the sufferers.