A History of Medical Psychology, Part IV:
THE RISE OF PSYCHOLOGY
Douglas Lehrer, M.D. Director of Medical Education Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare
German Romanticists
• Tension in psychiatry mirrored tension between 18th C Enlightenment ideal of reason, and Romantic movement which stressed feeling and sentiment.
• Most prominent in early 19th C German alienists
German Romanticists
• Little interest in heredity, brain pathology
• Tended to believe passions were ruled by social circumstances, not biology • Spent long hours discussing patient’s subjective experience
Johann Christian Heinroth
(1773-1843)
• Emphasized effect of food, drink, sleep, exercise, air pollution, hygiene • Individualized kindness, warmth, firmness as needed • Obsessed with morality and sin, and internal conflicts between sin and conscience
Johann Christian Heinroth
(1773-1843)
• Tripartite theory:
• The instinctual forces • Consciousness (das Ich) • That which is over us (Ueber-uns)
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
• Universal magnetic fluid • Controversial figure • Many followers • Many detractors, incl. medical establishment
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
• Wand would concentrate “animal magnetism” on patient who sat in oaken barrel • Later got rid of wand and barrel
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)
• Altering flow of magnetism cured illness • Expelled from Vienna (1777) after allegedly curing young woman of blindness • Louis XVI (1784) commissioned panel to examine claims • Concluded any effects due to the imagination of subjects
Medical Mesmerism
• Results too impressive to ignore • Scientific experimentation with mesmerism • James Braid, England • A. A. Liebeault, France
James Braid (1795-1860)
• • • • English surgeon Rejected “magnetism” Ostracized by colleagues 1842: Coined terms “hypnosis,” “hypnotism,” “hypnotize” • Demonstrated surgery under hypnosis
A. A. Liebeault (1823-1904)
• Began study hypnotism in the year of Braid’s death • Treated with hypnosis for free • Successful hypnotherapy of psychiatric illnesses • Succeeded in Nancy by Hippolyte Bernheim
Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893)
• • • • • • Salpetriere: Medical Dept tx’d neuroses Described ALS; ID’d MS neuropathology Saw hypnotizability as sign of pathology Principle focus on hysteria Taught many neurologists and psychiatrists Lineage from Mesmer to Freud