ABSTRACT
The Enlightenment took place in Europe roughly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It grew out of the Renaissance and brought the changes of that era to a new level. The advances of this age built upon those of the previous in regard to knowledge, beliefs, and practices in politics, economics, philosophy, religion, medicine, art, and literature. As noted in the last chapter, the humanists of the Renaissance had promoted human confidence in their own intellectual abilities, while the Reformation had undermined the authority of the Catholic Church. The Enlightenment continued to move humanity solidly toward the modern world of empirical science, secular society, representative government, and the overall primacy of human-centered psychology, values, and personal interests in all things affecting us. It also marked the beginning of psychiatry being a true medical specialty. This process was driven, in part, by the emergence of asylums for the mentally ill throughout Europe. Their management required medical professionals who specialized in the identification and treatment of mental illness. This process also drove the development of better categorical systems of understanding mental illness. Of course, Europe was not the only place that changes were occurring in the identification and treatment of mental illness, and this chapter explores some dynamics that were occurring in other cultures.
