-
Hippocrates was the most famous Greek physician. He produced both diagnostic classification system and a model by which to explain abnormal behavior.
-
Over a 300 year period, at least 200,00 people in Europe were accused of witch-craft and 100,00 were put to death, approximately 80-85% of whom where women.
-
During the late 1700's in Europe, the treatment of mental disorders went beyond providing rest and humane care. The German physician Franz Anton Mesmer hardly followed the conventional medical establishment. He believed that a substance called animal magnetism existed within the body.
-
Pinel was the director of Bicetre, an assylum for men. In his "Memoir on Maddness," he proposed that mental illness was often curable and that to apply appropriate treatment, the physican must listen to the patient and observe his behavior.
-
German physician Wilhelm Wundt is credited with introducing psychological discovery into a laboratory setting. Known as the "father of experimental psychology" he founded the first psychological laboratory, at Leipzig University, in 1879. Wundt focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components, motivated in part by an analogy to recent advances in chemistry, and its successful investigation of the elements and structure of material.
-
From the 1890s until his death in 1939, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, a method of investigation of the mind and the way one thinks; a systematized set of theories about human behavior; and a form of psychotherapy to treat psychological or emotional distress, especially unconscious conflict.
-
In 1904, Ivan Pavlov recieved the Nobel Prize for his research on the physiology of dog digestion, which in turn led to his discovery of conditioned responses.
-
John B. Watson, a well known animal phychologist, joined the faculty of johns Hopkins University. Watson believed that the only appropriate objects of scientific study were observable behaviors, not inner thoughts or feelings. This view, known as behaviorism, is based on principles that consider all behavior to be learned as a result of experience or interactions with the environment.
-
Psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943 posited that humans have a hierarchy of needs, and it makes sense to fulfill the basic needs first, before higher-order needs can be met.
-
Avicenna know as the "prince and chief of physicians" and "the second teacher after Aristotle," wrote about 450 works . His approach to mental illness foreshadowed what would take an additional 600 years to appear in Europe.
