A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought

Abstract

The Hippocratic texts and other contemporary medical sources have often been overlooked in discussions of ancient psychology. They have been considered to be more mechanical and less detailed than poetic and philosophical representations, as well as later medical texts such as those of Galen. This book does justice to these early medical accounts by demonstrating their richness and sophistication, their many connections with other contemporary cultural products and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations. In addition, it reads these sources not only as archaeological documents but also in the light of methodological discussions that are fundamental to the histories of psychiatry and psychology. As a result of this approach, the book will be important for scholars of these disciplines as well as those of Greek literature and philosophy, strongly advocating the relevance of ancient ideas to modern debates.

“Other psychotherapies”: Healing interactions across time, geography, and culture

“…However, a distinct or systematic psychological methodology for handling mental disease had not yet been advanced, as we can see from the fact that the physiological explanation of mental disorder prompted naturalistic prescriptions for its cure: for example, exercise and diet as part of a daily regime, suitable environment, drugs (e.g., hellebore against melancholy), and, occasionally, invasive methods such as venesection and surgery. It has recently been suggested that the lack of emphasis on the psychosomatic basis of the human being in Classical medicine attests to the collective attempt of Hippocratic doctors to demarcate their professional territory as separate from that of philosophers (Thumiger, 2018).…”

Therapy of the word and other psychotherapeutic approaches in Ancient Greek medicine

“…classical medicine, we do not find anything of this kind. The impression is that the medicine of this early period programmatically excluded from its domain any aspect that might have to do with the emotions, with subjectivity, with the ethical and private – in short, whatever belongs to the personal sphere and comes to the fore in psychotherapy (See: Thumiger, 2017, pp. 335–45).…”

“…19 On this close and largely social delimitation see Singer (2014), pp. 207–18; Thumiger (2017), pp. 271–2.…”

“…22 See Thumiger (2017); on the social context of Galen's psychological works, see Singer (2013), pp. 4–9, 207–18; more generally Mattern (2008), pp.…”

‘Insanity in Classical Antiquity’, by JL Heiberg (1913)

“…Twentieth-century historiographical concerns about the dangers of an anachronistic reading of the classical texts (Pigeaud, 1981, 1987; Simon, 1972–3, 1978) have generated new scholarship (Ahonen, 2014, 2019; Berrios, 1994; Harris, 2013; Hershkowitz, 1998; Konstan, 2006; Maieron, 2017; Mumford, 1996; Perdicoyianni-Paléologou, 2009a, 2009b; Thiher, 1999; Thumiger, 2017, 2018; Thumiger and Singer, 2018).…”