Psychiatric Disability and the Galenic Medical Matrix

Abstract

Disablement of the mind is not a single, static phenomenon, but a product of biological and cultural factors that manifest as socio-economic interactions and negotiations. This chapter employs Galen's anecdotal reports of aberrant mental states to focus more on social interactions than on medical or psychiatric history. Disorders of behaviour can be recorded, grouped, and treated, but instances of mental disability in the Galenic Corpus are individual and relative to a situation. Three points are summarised: First, ancient syndromes described do not fit into modern nosological categories. Second, there is great variation from one author to the next - and, in this case, within Galen's writings - among correspondences between symptoms and disease: fluidity is the rule, not the exception, for diagnosis. Third, mental disorders resisted classification in antiquity and they still do today, but twenty-first century practitioners have the semantic and taxonomic authority to persuade them to submit to classification. Keywords:aberrant mental state; Galen's anecdotal reports; Galenic Corpus; mental disability; psychiatric disability; social interaction