Descriptive psychopathology: conceptual and historical aspects

1984 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Berrios
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
Historical Aspects ◽  
New Hypothesis

SynopsisThis paper offers a conceptual and historical analysis of descriptive psychopathology. The first section defines it as a cognitive system constituted by terms, assumptions and rules for its application. It traces the conceptual implications of this definition and relates them to clinical practice. The second section contains an up-to-date assessment of current historical work on descriptive psychopathology and offers a new hypothesis to account for its development during the nineteenth century. It is suggested that the work involved in the testing of the hypothesis should be carried out by psychiatrists with historical training and as a separate speciality. It is concluded that the historical calibration of psychiatric symptoms must be considered as an essential stage in the construction of a viable descriptive psychopathology.

Prerequisites for the reforms of the Russian Empire in the 1860s: a historical analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-2) ◽  
pp. 176-184
Author(s):  
Dmitry Nechevin ◽  
Leonard Kolodkin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Political Economic

The article is devoted to the prerequisites of the reforms of the Russian Empire of the sixties of the nineteenth century, their features, contradictions: the imperial status of foreign policy and the lagging behind the countries of Western Europe in special political, economic relations. The authors studied the activities of reformers and the nobility on the peasant question, as well as legitimate conservatism.

scholarly journals The past and present of pandemic management: health diplomacy, international epidemiological surveillance, and COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavio D’Abramo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Epidemiological Surveillance ◽  
Health Diplomacy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Administrative Systems

AbstractThe establishment of international sanitary institutions, which took place in the context of rivalry among the great European powers and their colonial expansion in Asia, allowed for the development of administrative systems of international epidemiological surveillance as a response to the cholera epidemics at the end of the nineteenth century. In this note, I reflect on how a historical analysis of the inception of international epidemiological surveillance and pandemic management helps us to understand what is happening in the COVID-19 pandemic today.

‘Our passion for legality’: international law and imperialism in late nineteenth-century Britain

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
CASPER SYLVEST
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
South African ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Congo Free State

AbstractThis article deploys a historical analysis of the relationship between law and imperialism to highlight questions about the character and role of international law in global politics. The involvement of two British international lawyers in practices of imperialism in Africa during the late nineteenth century is critically examined: the role of Travers Twiss (1809–1897) in the creation of the Congo Free State and John Westlake’s (1828–1913) support for the South African War. The analysis demonstrates the inescapably political character of international law and the dangers that follow from fusing a particular form of liberal moralism with notions of legal hierarchy. The historical cases raise ethico-political questions, the importance of which is only heightened by the character of contemporary world politics and the attention accorded to international law in recent years.

Impact of neuropsychiatry screening in neurological in-patients: comparison with routine clinical practice

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 297-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Earl ◽  
Olimpia Pop ◽  
Kate Jefferies ◽  
Niruj Agrawal
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Psychiatric Comorbidity ◽  
Screening Programme ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Routine Clinical Practice ◽  
Routine Practice ◽  
Sustained Effect

Earl J, Pop O, Jefferies K, Agrawal N. Impact of neuropsychiatry screening in neurological in-patients: comparison with routine clinical practiceBackground: It is now well recognised that the rate of psychiatric comorbidity is high in patients with neurological disorders. Psychiatric comorbidity has a significant impact on quality of life and often goes undetected in routine clinical practice.Objectives: To compare the rate of detection of psychiatric illness in routine clinical practice with the prevalence of mental illness established using a dedicated screening programme at a regional neuroscience centre and to assess if the screening programme had any enduring impact on routine clinical practice after its completion.Methods: Consecutive admissions to a neurology ward in the 3-month period before (n = 160) and after (n = 158) a dedicated neuropsychiatric screening programme was carried out were identified. Case notes were then reviewed to establish if symptoms of mental illness were identified by the treating neurologists and if patients were referred for neuropsychiatric assessment. Rates of detection of neuropsychiatric problems and rates of referral for treatment were compared with those identified during the screening programme.Results: In routine clinical practice, over two 3-month study periods, psychiatric symptoms were identified in 23.7% of patients and only 10.6% received neuropsychiatric interventions. This is much lower as compared with rates identified (51.3%) and treated (51.3%) during dedicated screening. Detection of mood symptoms decreased from 14.7% pre-screening to 3.8% in the post-screening period.Conclusion: Rate of detection and treatment of neuropsychiatric problems remain low in neurology in-patients in routine clinical practice. Neuropsychiatric screening is effective but does not have sustained effect once it stops. Hence we suggest that active ongoing screening should be incorporated into routine practice.

scholarly journals The predictive value of measures of social cognition for community functioning in schizophrenia: Implications for neuropsychological assessment

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.H.M. PIJNENBORG ◽  
F.K. WITHAAR ◽  
J.J. EVANS ◽  
R.J. VAN DEN BOSCH ◽  
M.E. TIMMERMAN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
Psychiatric Symptoms ◽  
Emotion Perception ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Independent Living Skills ◽  
Community Functioning ◽  
Living Skills

AbstractThe objective of this study was to examine the unique contribution of social cognition to the prediction of community functioning and to explore the relevance of social cognition for clinical practice. Forty-six schizophrenia patients and 53 healthy controls were assessed with tests of social cognition [emotion perception and Theory of Mind (ToM)], general cognition, and, within the patient sample, psychiatric symptoms. Community functioning was rated by nurses or family members. Social cognition was a better predictor of community functioning than general cognition or psychiatric symptoms. When the contributions of emotion perception and ToM were examined separately, only ToM contributed significantly to the prediction of community functioning. Independent living skills were poor in patients with impaired social cognition. In controls, social cognition was not related to community functioning. ToM was the best predictor of community functioning in schizophrenia. However, to fully understand a patient’s strengths and weaknesses, assessment of social cognition should always be combined with assessment of general cognition and psychiatric symptoms. (JINS, 2009, 15, 239–247).

G. C. Lichtenberg: Dreams, Jokes, and the Unconscious in Eighteenth-Century Germany

1992 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 761-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Functional Link ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Dream Analysis ◽  
German Physicist

The German physicist and writer Lichtenberg (1742–1799) was well known during the nineteenth century as a humorist, thinker, and psychologist. He was also a favorite author of Freud, who read him beginning in his teens, quoted him frequently, and called him a “remarkable psychologist.” Despite this, he has been ignored by psychoanalysts and historians of psychiatry alike, and most of his writing is still unavailable in English. An introduction to Lichtenberg as a psychologist is provided, stressing material dealing with dream analysis, association theory, and drives. Relevant excerpts are translated into English. Lichtenberg is shown to have insisted upon the need for a systematic and rationalistic study of dreams, to have analyzed individual dreams (describing them as dramatized representations of thoughts, associations, and even conflicts from his own waking life), and to have emphasized the functional link between dreams and daydreams. His remarks on drives and commentary on eighteenth-century association theory represent a significant practical application, and thus refinement, of Enlightenment rationalistic psychology. These achievements are assessed in light of Freud's early fascination with him; it is argued that Lichtenberg is an example of the relevance of the historical and cultural background of psychoanalysis to clinical practice.

Freaks of Fancy, Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Ornamented Typography in the Twenty-First Century

Design Issues ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Arden Stern
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Digital Design ◽  
First Century ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
Us History ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article offers a historical analysis of 21st-century American engagements with 19th-century ornamented typography, demonstrating how this form of historicist practice constructs purposeful continuities between past and present by aligning 19th- and 21st-century modes of production. These alignments, balanced on fraught cultural divisions between handmade/machine-made and authentic/artificial, are resolutely ahistorical yet speak volumes about the dynamics of information capitalism, deindustrialization, and recession in recent US history. The analysis focuses upon two genres of neo-19th-century typographic revivals: heritage letterpress fetishism, which invokes an imagined return to authentic handcraft, and revivalist authentications of digital design practice, in which designers use the old to confer legitimacy upon the new.

Dementia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a conceptual history

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Berrios
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Deficit ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Mental Function ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
First Time ◽  
Legal Meaning

SynopsisAn historical analysis is made of the word and of the concept of ‘dementia’ before the nineteenth century. With regard to the word, it is shown that it had legal and medical meanings and that, while the former developed during the seventeenth century, the latter did so only during the eighteenth century (earlier than psychiatric historians have suggested). As evidence for the latter point, rare historical material on ‘Démence’ from the first edition of the Encyclopédie Française is presented for the first time in English. It is also shown that the legal meaning was finally enshrined in the ‘Code Napoléon’. With regards to the concept of dementia, it is shown that it took final shape in the work of Willis, Hartley and Cullen in whose view it was made to include terminal states of behavioural incompetence due to severe failure of almost any mental function. During this period, dementia was not yet associated with a particular age group nor was specifically defined in terms of cognitive deficit. The origins of the ‘cognitive’ paradigm of dementia and of the clinical boundaries of the future concept of dementia are briefly outlined.

scholarly journals Charles Darwin and the scientific mind

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID STACK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Scientific Mind ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Erasmus Darwin ◽  
William Whewell

AbstractAlthough often presented as an essential, ahistorical or innate psychological entity, the notion of a ‘scientific mind’ is ripe for historical analysis. The growing historical interest in the self-fashioning of masculine identities, and more particularly the self-fashioning of the nineteenth-century scientist, has opened up a space in which to probe what was understood by someone being said to possess a ‘scientific mind’. This task is made all the more urgent by the recently revived interest of some psychologists in the concept and the highly gendered and culturally conditioned understanding of the scientific mind displayed in some contemporary debates. This article contributes to that task, and fills a rare gap in Darwin studies by making the first detailed exploration of Charles Darwin's understanding of the scientific mind, as revealed in the psychological self-analysis he undertook in his ‘Recollections of the development of my mind and character’ (1876), and supplemented in hisLife of Erasmus Darwin(1879). Drawing upon a broad range of Darwin's published and unpublished works, this article argues that Darwin's understanding of the scientific mind was rooted in his earliest notebooks, and was far more central to his thought than is usually acknowledged. The article further delineates the differences between Darwin's understanding and that of his half-cousin Francis Galton, situates his understanding in relation to his reading of William Whewell and Auguste Comte, and considers what Darwin's view of the scientific mind tells us about his perspective on questions of religion and gender. Throughout, the article seeks to show that the ‘scientific mind’ is always an agglomeration of historically specific prejudices and presumptions, and concludes that this study of Darwin points to the need for a similarly historical approach to the question of the scientific mind today.

Opiates and the ‘Therapeutic Revolution’ in Japan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Vitale
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Edo Period ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Short Span

Summary This article argues that the widespread use of opiate-compounded medicines in late-nineteenth-century Japan was partly a result of Meiji period (1868–1912) public health policies. An overview of the status of opiates in Japan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries is intended to explain possible reasons: pharmaceutical reforms in the 1870s and 1880s were based on Edo-period (1603–1868) protostructures of regulated drug manufacture; in contrast, the Meiji government failed to introduce Western clinical practice within a short span of time. As a result opiates, marketed as Western ‘modern’ medicines, were smoothly integrated into pre-existing beliefs, according to which drugs and diets maintained bodily health.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document