The Major Changes in our Understanding of Psychological Dysfunction - Essay Example

Question: Describe the major changes in our understanding of psychological dysfunction from early supernatural accounts of ‘madness’ to late 19th early 20th century somatogenic and psychogenic explanations. Discuss the importance of the cultural/historical context in our definition and explanation of psychological disorders. It has become an overly common sentiment in postmodern society to claim that all knowledge, beliefs, and truths are relative to the individual making them. Anything posited is but the product of the point in time and space in which it was conceived. The near ubiquity of this sort of skepticism is such as to have made envious the most adamant of the pre-Socratics who gave birth to that school. The question of knowing has ever been a contentious one for philosophy. It was Hegel who said (though neither the first nor the last) that any given idea is wholly beholden to its epoch. Something as seemingly universal as culture was for Hegel a subjective monolith which claimed to be eternal. “...[T]he function of culture consists merely in clothing whatever content it has before it in the form of universality” (Hegel 1975, p. 142). The field of psychology is by no means immune to this historical reality. The system and methodology ascribed to the theorization and practice of psychology, both for the ancients and for the moderns, has ever been greatly dependent upon and influenced by the morals, beliefs, truths, and rationalizations of the particular culture in question. The practice and theorization of psychology, particularly the definition and diagnosis of “madness”, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as in antiquity has long mirrored and been influenced by the two great schools of Western thought which emerged in post-Socratic Ancient Greece: Epicureanism and Stoicism. Epicureanism held that “pleasure was the only worthwhile aim in life...pleasure was a state of being, with natural and necessary desires being satisfied” (Epicurus 1998). Contrarily, Stoicism sought a more balanced approach to human desires, pangs, and vices. For the Stoics man should “live in harmony with nature. The vicissitudes of life were viewed with equanimity: pleasure, pain, and even death were irrelevant to true happiness” (Stoics 1998). Though both promoted some level of asceticism, they ultimately differed in profound ways. The Epicureans believed that man was a product of and a thus a slave to his physiological needs and emotional caprices. Surely he should seek to control and moderate them but he should not seek to deny them (because he cannot). Man’s desires are determined by nature and are not to be denied. The Stoics stressed the need to assert the will so as to deny the impulses. The two schools’ metaphysics came to greatly influence their view on mental disorder (and as a consequence the nineteenth century’s view of the same). The Epicureans believed that all existence was atomic, that is material. What in the philosophy of Kant was to be found in the distinction between the transcendent and the immanent, the Epicureans claimed that all phenomena existed in this, the physical, realm (the immanent). All matter consisted of atoms. More important for the question of madness, the Epicureans asserted an important claim related to psychology. Epicurean philosophy begins with a psychological claim that all knowledge originates in sensation. The material organization of the body is such that experience becomes recorded in memory and can be revived in the form of concepts. By association, these concepts come to stand for the items originally given in experience...All experience is the outcome of interactions...between material entities-the matter of the world and the matter of the sense organs. (Robinson 1986, p. 99) This contrasted with the Stoic view of human knowledge and existence as being transcendental. As opposed to an atomic basis of existence, the Stoics believed “that a rational principle (logos) guides the universe...” (Robinson 1986, p. 100). For the Stoics there was a “fifth element” which formed the basis of things and which was beyond human perception. There were, according to them, laws of nature, but it was the human will and soul which allowed man to resist desire and thus the universe. One school held that everything was a product of the body, the other that all was a product of the mind. The ancients subscribed to a belief that mental illness was a sign of the “anger of the gods”. This did not stop some from investigating and speculating as to the true cause of madness. The battle in the nineteenth century between psychogenic and somatogenic interpretations of human psychology finds its origins with the Stoic and Epicurean argument over the nature of human thought (and thus madness). Psychogenic is made up of the Greek words for “soul” (psyche) and “origin” (genesis). Somatogenic comes from “body” (soma) and “origin” (genesis). Thus psychogenic means “soul-originating” and somatogenic means “body-originating”. Epicurean materialism could not accept a transcendent soul. To believe that the soul can affect the body requires that the soul be destructible. Personal immortality, therefore, is out of the question, as is fear of punishment in the afterlife. (Robinson 1986, p. 103) When in the nineteenth century the two competing approaches to madness were asserting and counter-asserting, they were continuing a millennia-old question as to the nature of human existence (and thus psychology): is human existence but the result of the body and its interaction with external stimuli or is it the product of the soul and the endless struggle of the will to overcome adversity and temptation. The emergence of the nineteenth century antagonism between the somatogenic and psychogenic hypotheses regarding mental illness did not come about ex nihilo. It is important to note that Europe and North America of the nineteenth century had been greatly affected by the scientific revolution and the rise empiricism and determinism, along with the scientific method, which had together been increasing in importance and influence nearly everywhere. If anything the nineteenth century held that all knowledge was discoverable and, more importantly, existence was immanent. The claims of religion and theology of a soul and the transcendent were dated and obsolete views. Nonetheless, even in the realm of psychology, the ancient antagonism between the Stoics and the Epicureans reappeared, albeit in altered form. The debate between the psychogenic and somatogenic hypotheses continues today. ...[T]he mind-body distinction is implicit in White’s opposition of the somatogenic and psychogenic hypotheses. The former postulates a physiological basis for behavioral disturbances and proposes that mental diseases are, in essence, disorders of the body. The latter postulates that behavioral disorders originate in emotional or ideation-that is mental-processes that have become disordered through motivational conflict and subsequent anxiety. (Shontz 1962, p. 531). In the nineteenth century early-modern psychologists forwarded the method of “experimental introspection” which proceed[s] from the from the conviction that only a person having an experience can report it...John Stuart Mill dubbed this the ‘psychological method’ and he defended it against the utterly biologized psychology of Comte’s Positive Philosophy. (Robinson 1986, pp. 368-369) Comte and his sympathizers posited what was known as “reductive materialism” which claimed that “all mental states, events, and processes originate in the states, events, and processes of the body and, more specifically, the brain” (Robinson 1986, p. 369). The relationship of the two methods to our earlier talking points should be obvious. It was no coincidence that the two methods pitted two individuals like Mill and Comte against one another. In the era of scientific rationalism, determinism had come to greatly dominate much of the natural and then nascent social sciences. Mill, the champion of liberalism and choice, stressed the importance of the psyche. Mental illness was a reality of a disturbed mind (soul) which could only be healed through contemplation and inner searching. This harks back to the great Roman proponent of Stoic thought, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius who stressed the need to meditate and be patient. Comte, the so-called father of the social sciences, sought to proclaim a new religion based upon science and knowledge (sense-based). For him man was a product of the physical world, external stimuli, and bodily factors (soma) (Robinson 1986, pp. 369-374). He was the heir to the Epicureans. This dichotomy in nineteenth century psychology largely reflected the similar antagonism in Academia between the social sciences and the humanities. In a simplistic sense, the former claimed (and claim) that man’s actions are determined and thus predictable, whereas the latter did not (and do not). The prominence attributed to the body or the mind in the diagnosis of psychological disorders continued in the early twentieth century in a variety of ways. In Austria and the United States various forms of behaviorism became widespread. Radical behaviorism excluded consciousness altogether from psychological science in favor of establishing ‘prediction and control’ of behavior…the social science and child development programs…shared a belief in hard facts-in the idea, for example, that measuring a child’s growth and IQ test scores over time would produce scientific norms of human development-and hoped to utilize this factual knowledge to rationalize society. (Ash 2005, p. 103) The Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer sought “to study [the] psychological deficits in brain-injured patients…According to this theory, paranoid symptoms emerge as the result of lack of integration between the individual and his or her social environment…(Silverstein 2004, p. 261). The body-mind debate has raged since. Later forms of healing modalities like applied psychoanalysis de-emphasized the role played by “out of the skin” elements in the genesis and reproduction of the person’s actions. This trend has begun to gain renewed vigor through cognitive therapy, whereby a mind cure is primarily called for, often at the expense of careful consideration of societal solutions. (Prilleltensky 1990, p. 770) It is obvious that new words and terms were developed to give new life to an old debate. Thus it should be clear that beliefs, claims, epistemologies, and scientific methodologies are all relative to their individual eras. Each time period can and does delegate importance to those that suit its needs and desires. For the Ancient Romans, it was Stoicism and the transcendent which held the day. In nineteenth century rational society, with its obsession with “facts” and science, the deterministic claims of the Epicureans seemed to have been supreme. In psychology, both the somatogenic and psychogenic methodologies vied for dominance. Though both made great contributions, one would be hard-pressed to say that the somatogenic interpretation of human mental illness has not gained the upper hand. Today the sway which rational science holds over the popular conscience is undeniable. And yet with the advance and propagation of scientific thought there exists the possibility of the weakening of the will and the destruction of human freedom. Whatever happens, it is clear that the debate between the Stoics and the Epicureans is as much alive in the modern era as it was in antiquity. References Ash, Mitchell G. (2005). The Uses and Usefulness of Psychology. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 600, 99-114. Epicurus. (1998). In Oxford Encyclopedia of World History (p. 219). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. (1975). Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prilleltensky, Isaac. (1990). The Politics of Abnormal Psychology: Past, Present, and Future. Political Psychology, 11:4, 767-785. Robinson, Daniel N. (1986). An Intellectual History of Psychology. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. Shontz, Franklin C. (1962). Somatic-Psychological Interaction in Physical and Mental Health. Review of Educational Research, 32:5, 530-542. Silverstein, Steven M. (2004). Gestalt Psychology: The Forgotten Paradigm in Abnormal Psychology. The American Journal of Psychology, 117:2, 259-277. Stoics. (1998). In Oxford Encyclopedia of World History (p. 639). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More