Ancient Beliefs and Remedies

Greek and Roman Beliefs and Therapies

Medieval Philosophy and Treatment

Treatment in the Renaissance Era

Medical Approaches in the Nineteenth Century

Socrates

Aristotle

Plato

Rene Descartes

Luigi Galvani

William James

Sigmund Freud

Carl Jung

The History of Schizophrenia

People have been called crazy, insane, hysterical, disruptive, eccentric and even possessed for centuries, even millennia. For as long as there has been a record of human history, there has been a record of mental illnesses. Even before the advent of written language, scientific thought or the structures of civilization, there are clues that hint to us that as long as human beings have been intelligent, there have been persons that have had psychological problems.

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Therefore, on any medical scroll, tablet, pictogram or text found among relics, surviving from the civilizations of old, there is evidence of scientific investigation into the causes and treatments of mental disorders. Throughout history, these problems have been identified as stemming from some interesting sources. Investigation tended to either look into something being innately wrong in one of our focal corporeal areas, most often the brain, heart or reproductive centers or assessing that there was some external influence that was being visited on the particular area or the person in general that was the cause of the sickness.

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These diagnoses, in particular the ones which involve extraneous factors have led to some peculiar and, in some cases, extreme complexes being built around the root, manifestation and necessary treatment of the illnesses. Examination of external factors, more often than not, would lead to postulation concerning the action of ethereal agents on human beings. This, of course, would result subsequently in fear and trepidation which would lead to crude, often rash reactions with the intent of liberating the individuals from their bondage. There would, hence, often develop some standard ‘restorative’ or ‘alleviating’ method which would unanimously be accepted by the population as necessary for treating whatever ailment, regardless of other physiological concerns.

• Ancient Beliefs and Remedies

• Greek and Roman Beliefs and Therapies

• Medieval Philosophy and Treatment

• Treatment in the Renaissance Era

• Medical Approaches in the Nineteenth Century

The Fathers of Research in Psychology and Neuroscience

No discussion of the development of the fields of Psychology and Neuroscience would be complete without paying homage to the hallmark intellectual figures that were the foundations and pillars  which facilitated the basics and methodologies, insights and theories, discoveries and breakthroughs that were key to the establishment of the studies of the brain as legitimate and essential to the course of human intellectual development.
    Thrroughout the ages Psychology was analysed from the perspectives of other pre-established scholarly fields. The study of people from the perspectives of mythology,  theology, philosophy and politics would, hence include the study of people's  innate charateristics,  fundamental  cognitive skills and abilities and the phsyiological interpretation of the experience of consiousness. It was not until the end of the 19th century that Psycholgy was recognized independently as a neccessary area of study. This occured when Wilhelm Wundt opened the first offcial psychological laboratory in 1879 at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Wundt introduced a scientific method of investigation called Structuralism of psychology and performed many experiments to measure individuals' reaction times on various tasks to evaluate the senses and the perception of time, attention, emotion and memory. He is credited, therefore, with officially establishing psychology as an academic discipline and is sometimes dubbed the father of modern psychology.
    Even before Wundt introducing the world to Psychology, there were scholars delving into postulation along lines that ran very close to investigating the phenomenon of the mind and brain.
The record of scholars  who contributed  their thoughts to the cereberal conundrum  includes:

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1. Socrates
2. Aristotle
3. Plato
4. Rene Descartes
5. Luigi Galvani
6. William James
7. Sigmund Freud
8. Carl Jung

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