The importance of the social and intellectual contexts in a discussion of the history of the concept of psychosis

Abstract

This paper show that, through out its 150 year history, the concept of 'psychosis' has not been static, but has reflected the intellectual and social contexts in which it has been employed. Initially the concept reflected the Romantic psychiatrists' emphasis on the whole personality. With the advent of materialism the concept was applied to all mental disorders. Because of the claims for organic cerebral findings in dementia praecox, it was described by Meyer as fitting the disease concept, with characteristic pathology, symptomatology, course and prognosis. However, the different social milieux of patients being treated by psychiatrists such as Kraepelin and Bonhoeffer led to different emphases regarding the aetiology of the psychoses. In the later twentieth century the influence of urbanization in Europe and Africa and also the rise of Nazism led to changes in relation to the use of the concept of psychosis.