Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, there was a revolution in psychology. The dominant Victorian model of mental disturbance or lunacy was initially conceived in a moral framework but was gradually joined by a scientific, evolutionary perspective. Madness became less moral weakness than a form of biological regression, a loss of the most recently acquired, and thus most fragile, faculty of reason. Although it was held that the healthy will could still master physiological impulses, the mechanism of the body was often regarded as determining the development of the mind, particularly in children, women, and the lower races. From the 1870s, a number of pioneers began to explore the possibility that the psyche might develop and act independently of biology – to some extent, at least.