Historical Perspective of Etymology and Understanding of Psychosocial Wellbeing: From Antiquity to Modern Times

Abstract

How old is the idea of psychiatry and how long has psychotherapy been practiced? Most likely the Greeks and Romans had inkling, even if these two words are fairly modern and given that Plato and Galen had a few things to say as well, it should not surprise us that doctors have known for thousands of years that mind and body are connected. The great scholars of ancient Greeks and Romans incorporated psychology with medicine and philosophy. In the Asklepeian custom the therapeutic sanctuaries not only addressed the body but the soul too. The Psychiatric infirmities as Melancholia and Hysteria were identified in Egypt and Sumaria as early as 2600 BC. Unani system of the psychiatric nosology is also a component of medical categorization under the heading of “Amraz-e-Nafsani” (psychiatric disorders) where all the diseases are classified as syndromes rather than an individual disease entity on the basis of concepts and philosophies of mainly of Hippocrates followed by Plato and later Arabs. In the 17th century, French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes gave the concept of Dualism, i.e., that the body and mind are separate entities which were disagreed by English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. It was German scientist Wilhelm Wundt who founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research which led Psychology to become a self-conscious field of experimental study in 1879. In the late 19th century, William James founded Functionalism, which offered substitute to structuralism.