Pinel Humanism

During this time, advanced care for people with disabilities and mental illness started to flourish. Philippe Pinel and Jean Etienne Domique Esquirol were psychiatrists who used modern psychological approaches to care. Pinel was the director of the Paris asylums in 1794(Museum of Disability). He refused to torture the mentally ill patients, which was considered the usual method. Instead, he befriended his patients and engaged them in activities. Esquirol took Pinel’s place at Salpetriere and continued the humane treatment. He became the first person to differentiate between mental deficiency and insanity. He felt that the chance of improvement was with the insane, not the mentally deficient. In 1848, in the United States, Dr. Samuel Howe founded the “Massachusetts School for Idiotic & Feeble-Minded Youth”. Howe prepared the children to return to their families by teaching them how to be productive despite their

Due to the evident horrific treatment of patients in asylums, many reforms began to take place starting in the mid-to-late 1800s, and the 18th and 19th centuries saw the growth of a more humanitarian view of mental illness. A reformists greatly influenced the spread of what is known as the “Humanitarian Movement,” by the first being Phillipe Pinel, in Paris. Pinel believed that “mentally ill patients would improve if they were treated with kindness and consideration” instead of filthy, noisy, and abusive environments. Meanwhile Tuke was another reformist also bringing similar change to northern England. This humanitarian movement spread across the Atlantic to the United States. Stemming largely from the work of Pinel and Tuke, moral management

The understanding of abnormal behavior has not evolved smoothly over the centuries. The way people have viewed abnormal behavior has been influenced by the dominant social, economic, and religious views of the times. For example, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was believed by some people that individuals experiencing mental disturbances were possessed by a devil. Asylums were established toward the end of the sixteenth century, but this institutionalization led to isolation and maltreatment of patients. It was not until the eighteenth century that improvements were made in providing patients with better humane treatment. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved humanitarian advances that included, acceptance of patients

Moral therapy was not only restricted to England, this concept was seen throughout Europe as well. Philippe Pinel a physician in Paris, “integrated moral treatment into the care of the insane by removing the chains of patients, improving their living conditions, and treating them with care.” Pinel referred to “madness as ‘mental alienation’; a straying from reason,” he insisted on distinguishing his ideas “from moral treatment practices at the York Retreat.” Pinel tried to “classify patients into distinct species” and “the moral faculties of the patients had to be addressed by means of self-disciple and self-control rather than coercion.” Pinel put forth that when an individual’s “emotions, passions and sediments are too intense it can generate into mental alienation.” According to Pinel, “affection posits mental alienation and moral therapy,” thus, a new method derived – classifying insane patients. This was found to be effective at the time by physician Pinel; and the method of categorization can be recognized in modern day

Virginia was the very first state to discover a disorder illness Harris).Over 300 years ago, Pinel revolutionized the cruel and inhuman treatment of psychotics with principles that foreshadowed the modern psychoanalytic approach. He believed that psychosis was reversible through the “study of tastes and inclinations” of the patients and the application of “well timed affability and firmness.” He introduced humanistic practices which are the base of present day social psychiatry and milieu therapy. Moreover, Pinel was empirical and research oriented. Pinel's collaborators, Jean-Baptiste and Marguerite Poussin, introduced creative, dramatic, and effective interventions which are astonishingly similar to modern psychoanalytic joining technique(Marshall Robert.J.,1995).

Many other highly notable influences on mental health and wellness exist and deserve great respect from modern therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists alike. Individuals such as Ivan Pavlov, Alfred Adler, Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers contributed to the mountain of fascinating theories that can now be pieced together to better help explain and care for the human condition. Those treating the mentally ill have been given powerful tools in understanding humanity on a very individual level, allowing for treatment of a person rather than just an

How does one define what it means to be human? Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, defined “a human [as] an animal (genus) that is rational (species).” Aristotle's definition was constrained to a general, biological census. However, I find that all the biological definitions of humanity completely travial, because we all know that there is something to humanity other than simply all being members of the same species. Many believe that humans have a seemingly unique consciousness or soul. But we also know that personhood is more than just a classification, because historically and currently people have denied the humanity of others despite the fact we are all members of the same species. This happens on a macro level when governments refuse to acknowledge the very existence of certain ethnic minorities. It happens on a micro level every time we dehumanize someone by imagining them as less complex than ourselves. It is easy for us to understand

The further understanding about mental health, in my opinion, can only better the treatment for those who suffer. If compassionate people like Pinel didn’t exist, the treatment and housing for the mentally ill would probably be the same, or worse. I’ve heard some stories about the facility in Evanston, and most aren’t that great. This assignment has sparked some interest and curiousity and I look forward to learning more about the humane treatment of the mentally ill.

Experimental intellectuals challenged the status quo. John Locke from England who was here from 1632 to 1704 and Denis Diderot from France who was here from 1713 to 1784 disputed, a lot as Cicero had previously completed expressing that our thoughts and emotions are produced by nothing more than sensations. In addition in France, the doctor Philippe Pinel who was here from 1745 to 1826 started stating the illness of the mind was an outcome of being exposed to psychosomatic and public stressors. A milestone in the history of psychiatry, Pineal’s Dissertation on Medico-Philosophical on psychological isolation or Mania needed a more humanitarian tactic to the treatment of mental disorder. This particular treatment involved reverence for the individual, a credulous and divulging doctor-patient association, reduced inducements, monotonous activity, and the complete letting go of antediluvian Hippocratic treatments. Around the same period Pineal in France, the Tukes which is the father and son in England established the York retreat, which was the original establishment ‘for the compassionate maintenance on the insane’ in the British

Throughout the centuries, the medicines used to treat madness have varied; however, the ultimate treatment has remained the same: negligence or ignorance. During the 14th and 15th centuries, mental illness was viewed as an inhabitation of an individual by demons or evil spirits; the method utilized to cure this ailment was a combination of exorcism and rituals. The patients were usually placed in hospices then asylums. During the 16th through 20th centuries, mentally ill patients were not often treated; most were cared for by their respective communities. Towards the 19th and 20ths centuries, many patients were placed in asylums that did not focus on patients’ treatment. Unlike the society of his time, Shakespeare illuminates the realities

Humanity is defined as all human beings collectively. When we speak about human nature we question the quality and condition of the human race, as well as the quality of being human, kind, and benevolent. Benevolent. The search for what made humans able to achieve benevolence in a way no other animal could. The question of what it means to be human is so important not because you need the answer to be human, but because it defines us in such an essential context. Understanding is so significant to our fundamental existence that we constantly question “why?” Two philosophers proposed resolutions as to why we, as humans, are so different than any other animal on this earth. Why? (notice how the human mind is ever asking that question) Simply because the query of

At this time many people who where considered ‘insane’ were free to roam about with the sane. This all changed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is when there was ‘an isolation of madness’ (Foucault, M, 1964). The insane were institutionalized or placed with prisoners. Instead there was modification created with the intent of reforming the mad. Foucault was cynical on this idea and stated that society was in fact becoming less human by locking the mad away, trying to shift their place in society (Foucault, M, 1964). This was a new outlook on an old problem, where he was in fact ‘making windows where there used to be walls’. He brought a new spin on the concept of the humanity of imprisoning and isolating the

What does it mean to be human? Does it constitute of scientific theories related to evolution or does it follow the code of morality, deciphering what is right from wrong? Many philosophers have discussed the idea of being human in different perspectives, showing us different sides of the question. But for a student like me, what does it truly mean to be human?

The somatic treatments had a rapid rise and fall, occupying a unique and relatively short period in early twentieth-century psychiatry. It was a pivotal time that marked the end of what critics called ‘therapeutic nihilism’ of the nineteenth century, that offered new hope in the 1920s and 1930s with treatment innovations to cure the insane. Psychiatrists took advantage of all the advances medical science had to offer, determined to help their patients and strengthen psychiatry’s status as a medical specialty. The medical model well-suited the psychiatric ideology in the physical basis of insanity, which doctors, in turn, adapted medical treatments to cure insanity. Doctors embraced medicalisation with physical treatments including malariotherapy in the late 1920s, insulin coma (ICT) and cardiazol therapy in

The “Godfathers” of moral treatment are undisputedly Philippe Pinel and William Tuke. Before the civilised asylum, the insane were treated as savages and there was little to no help offered to the mentally ill other than confinement. Roy Porter says that they inaugurated an era of kindness and medical care which prepared the way for a rational, humane approach to the mastery of mental illness .