A Brief History Of Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a very recent branch of psychology. Moreover, we cannot really speak of psychotherapy before the last quarter of the twentieth century. This is when we stop associating mental illness with supernatural forces.
Nevertheless, society has always sought to explain certain phenomena that affect people and for which a clear biological cause was impossible to find.
The beginnings of psychotherapy
If we go back in time, tribal societies already spoke of a soul present in all natural objects. They believed in animinism and believed that disease was a phenomenon of possessing a strange soul. The methods available to these societies were: ceremonies for the restoration of the lost soul, exorcism, confessions and incubation.
A little later, with Greece and the ancient world appears the origin of contemporary psychotherapy and its rational thought as well as philosophy and medicine. It is in this context that Aristotle distinguishes the different uses of the word “deprecation”. It is a persuasive word according to which the human being changes.
Plato, him, points out the beneficial effects of the beautiful speech on the soul and the body. Some of his observations on passions, dreams and the unconscious seem to be antecedents of Freudian thought.
We cannot but quote Hippocrates and Claude Galien.
- The Corpus Hipocraticum is one of the milestones of modern medicine. Hippocrates linked diseases to states of the organism and postulated the existence of four humours associated with a temperament, namely blood, pituitis, yellow bile and atrabile.
- As for Claude Galien, for his part, he developed the Hippocratic postulates and made a distinction between supernatural forces, natural forces and unnatural forces.
From the Middle Ages to psychotherapy
In the Middle Ages, the Church considered disease to be the will of the devil. To heal, we must have recourse to confession.
Later, during the Renaissance, certain authors like Pinel stood out. Pinel introduces moral treatment for the mentally ill. It is about humanizing these patients on the basis of an optimistic conception of the disease.
As previously commented, psychotherapy as such appeared in the 19th century. Cobbe uses the term “psychotherapeutic” in an article in which he defends the role of faith in healing. At this stage, isolating diseases for which an anatomical lesion could not be found is key. In addition, at this same time one purifies the animal magnetism or mesmerism and hypnosis is seen like an acceptable process.
The therapeutic process par excellence is hypnotic suggestion. Of course, followers and detractors of this current have appeared. The Marquis de Puysegur is one of the followers of this trend. He used hypnosis as an “artificial somnanbulism”, a means by which he allowed the patient to recover memories that he was not able to recover outside of this state.
Later, Braid comes up with the term “hypnosis” which he defines as nervous sleep. Following these advances, the Nancy schools emerge with Liébault and Berheim as representatives. The latter end up abandoning hypnosis: they create the same state but in a waking state. It is from this moment that we speak of “psychotherapy”.
In 1985, a Viennese neurologist, Sigmund Freud, published with Breuer a work entitled Studies on Hysteria . In this book, it is a question of developing the cathartic method applied to the patient Ana O. Later, the free association is developed: the patient lies down on a couch and begins to speak freely about a stage in his life.
The development of this discipline to the present day
As a result of psychoanalysis, a variety of alternative perspectives emerge, like that of Carl Rogers, which are more person-centered.
Subsequently, behaviorism is presented as a tool that understands disorders as learning. But it was only from the 60s and 70s that behavioral therapy was reinforced thanks to certain authors like Skinner and Wolpe.
New models are emerging such as the humanistic psychology led by Maslow. This American psychologist introduces a pyramid of needs and a systemic model that is applied in particular in the context of family therapy.
Cognitive models also appear as an evolution of behavioral theories based on learning. Representatives of these models are Beck, Ellis, Mahoney and Meichembaum.
Finally, since the 90s, third-generation therapies or contextual therapies have started to develop. These therapies return to radical behaviorism by taking into account the cognitive part but without attempting, like the rationalists, to modify the content: they modify the patient’s relationship with this content.
What we are sure of today is that psychotherapy is more effective than not treating it. Nevertheless, it is not possible to establish significant differences between the different perspectives which must then be considered as being equivalent.
Our thoughts MR therapy (Meditation, Relaxation) is an intervention to treat sleep paralysis that can affect some of us.
