The Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry in the Ancient Greece

José E Muñoz-Negro,José Pablo Martínez-Barbero,Jorge A Cervilla,Josefa M López-Pérez,Juan F Mula-Ponce

doi:10.4236/ojpp.2018.83020

Abstract

The object of study of Psychiatry is hybrid, that is, it is both natural and social. It combines the methods of natural Sciences and those of social Sciences. Currently, Psychiatry is the branch of Medicine where epistemological and hermeneutical conflicts are more than evident; it is the medical discipline where this debate is most intense and problematic. However, the conceptual foundations of all these debates and conflicts are already preconfigured within the framework of the Greek philosophy of the Classical period. Without knowing these conceptual foundations it is impossible to adequately clarify all these conflicting aspects. During the period of Classical Greece it was the time when the conceptual foundations and rationale of the tekne iatrike (of which Psychiatry was and is a part) were established as well as the theoretical principles of epistemological issues such as the validity of categories, the controversy between diagnostic categories and psychopathological dimensions, the approach towards both subjectivity and phenomenology, the inquiry for Psychopathology, the concept of mental health, the possibilities and limits of the scientific method in Psychiatry, the role of Psychotherapy and, naturally, some key ethical issues in mental health, such as the existence of the stigma on psychiatric disorders and all of the problems raised by the coercitive practices. To answer all of these questions, a review of the literature on this topic has been made in this paper, as well as a discussion and analysis of the key points of the epistemological and ethical debate.

Highlights

During the period of Classical Greece it was the time when the conceptual foundations and rationale of the tekné iatriké were established as well as the theoretical principles of epistemological issues such as the validity of categories, the controversy between diagnostic categories and psychopathological dimensions, the approach towards both subjectivity and phenomenology, the inquiry for Psychopathology, the concept of mental health, the possibilities and limits of the scientific method in Psychiatry, the role of Psychotherapy and, naturally, some key ethical issues in mental health, such as the existence of the stigma on psychiatric disorders and all of the problems raised by the coercitive practices
In his General Psychopathology (Jaspers, 1913), Jaspers carried out an immense epistemological effort to understand the nature of symptoms and the psychopathology of mental illnesses, leading him to confirm that in Psychiatry there were illnesses analogous to the ordinary medical ones, which meant that they could be studied and analyzed with Natural Science methods, while other illnesses, that presented clear variations of an ordinary pattern, had to be addressed with Social Science methodology
Issues such as the nature of the mental, the concepts of both health and illness, the methodological verification of the scientific method to address subjective matters, stigma, coercion, the mind-brain relationship, the moral responsibility in mental illnesses, the validity and transcultural universality of diagnoses, the inquiry for psychopathology and its contents, the right perspectives for the understanding of mental disorders and many others, have their philosophical foundations, or even occasionally their conceptualizations, in approaches already existing in Classical Greece

Summary

Introduction

As Berrios says, psychiatric objectives cannot be studied without understanding the conceptual systems from which they are explained Issues such as the nature of the mental, the concepts of both health and illness, the methodological verification of the scientific method to address subjective matters, stigma, coercion, the mind-brain relationship, the moral responsibility in mental illnesses, the validity and transcultural universality of diagnoses, the inquiry for psychopathology and its contents, the right perspectives for the understanding of mental disorders and many others, have their philosophical foundations, or even occasionally their conceptualizations, in approaches already existing in Classical Greece. Knowing them is an act of scholarship, but it helps to understand, clarify and envisage new ways or possibilities that may lead to the awakening of Psychiatry, at present rather asleep (De Leon, 2014)

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