The history of mental illness reveals that there are a few ways we tend to intervene, ways that, over time, come and go. Who is served by these interventions?
Efforts to intervene, to do "something", with the mentally ill are as old as mental illness itself. And the ways in which we intervene are based on how we understand, or see, mental illness. This way of seeing is rooted in the past and goes hand in hand with presumptions about the world, humanity, human potential and equality. This makes exploring the history of mental illness an important concern- for individual lives touched by mental illness as well as for social institutions that intend to deal with it.
Containing or Helping?
The history of mental illness reveals that there are a few ways we tend to intervene, ways that, over time, come and go. Like a pendulum, the way we interpret and treat mental illness, swing back and forth between two main tendencies: To contain or to help. This article presents a very, very brief and also incomplete history of mental illness. Only discuss trends up to the important work of Itard will be discussed. More extensive and in-depth versions of the ideas presented here are available. Should you be interested, please feel free to contact me .
Now, let's take a very brief peek at ways of seeing and treating mental illness throughout history.
Containing the Problem: Infanticide and Eugenics
Greek, Roman and Spartan societies sought, by and large, to "contain" the problem of mentally ill children. Infanticide and in some cases eugenics was the preferred method of the time. One of the very few ways in which children with a mental disorder could fulfill some kind of public position in these societies was to be a source of entertainment and laughter, performing as a clown if you will, for wealthy families. As always, however, there were, albeit few, are exceptions- the pocket of humanity offered by the Roman emperor Vespasian comes to mind for example.
Helping the Poor Child of God: Christianity
The rise of Christianity, which went hand in hand with proclamations against the selling, killing and mutilation of children with a mental illness, caused not only a decline in these practices but also a change in the way in which mental illness was perceived. This change was no doubt further influenced by the introspective work of the "father of psychoanalysis", Saint Augustine. And slowly but surely, the pendulum swung from "containment" towards "help". We see an example of this kind of help in the Bishop of Myra, who ran a residential care and treatment centre in the fourth century.
Burning the Devil's Work: The Mentally Ill on the Stake
Yet later, influenced by, amongst other things, the inquisition, the pendulum swung back again toward "containment" and many people with a mental illness, including children, died on the stake.
The Reformation: Clowns Once Again
The Reformation offered little relief and for a while, the only hope for children with a mental illness to find a place in society was, once again, to perform as clown for wealthy citizens.
Romanticism: Helping the Innocent
With the age of Romanticism, the pendulum swung toward "helping" again. It was during this time that Jean Jacques Rousseau, Maria Montessori, and Jean Marc Gaspard Itard left their mark on the ways in which mental illness was understood and treated. Despite the fact that the Society of the Observers of Man declared that the boy was "an incurable idiot", Itard started working with the boy in a systematic manner. Much of the work done with children with severe developmental delays is still, by and large, based on the same sensory-training approach developed by Itard while working with the Wild Boy of Aveyron.
Helping is Containing? For Who'se Benefit
The history of mental illness reveals two trends, containment and helping, that play tag throughout time, depending on our way of understanding mental illness. Perhaps prenatal screening and our current heavy emphasis on pharmaceutical intervention fit within the containment trend. Or, we might even go one step further and suggest that helping too, is a way to contain the other. After all, helping implies inequality in terms of power and status. Either way, this quick peek at the past reveals that over time, the mentally ill have given our socially agreed upon blueprint of relating to one another a good shake. This leaves most of us uncertain and uncomfortable. We are not sure what to do or say. And many of us are unlikely to put up with that discomfort for very long. So what do we do? Perhaps we do something to help "us" deal with "them". We "help" or "contain"...
