Psychology Essay

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Figure 13.4 In The Extraction of the

Stone of M adness, a 15th century

painting by Hieronym us Bosch, a

practitioner is using a tool to extract an

object (the supposed "stone of

m adness") from the head of an aﬄ icted

person.

M o d u le 1 3 .3 : P e r s p e c t iv e s o n P s y c h o lo g ic a l D is o r d e r s

Scientists and m ental health professionals m ay adopt different perspectives in attem pting to understand

or explain the underlying m echanism s that contribute to the developm ent of a psychological disorder. The

perspective used in explaining a psychological disorder is extrem ely im portant, in that it w ill consist of

explicit assum ptions regarding how best to study the disorder, its etiology, and w hat kinds of therapies or

treatm ents are m ost beneﬁcial. D ifferent perspectives provide alternate w ays for how to think about the

nature of psychopathology.

S u p e rn a tu ra l P e rs p e c tiv e s o f P s y c h o lo g ic a l D is o rd e rs

For centuries, psychological disorders w ere view ed from a supernatural perspective: attributed to a force

beyond scientiﬁc understanding. Those aﬄ icted w ere thought to be practitioners of black m agic or

possessed by spirits (Figure 13.4). For exam ple, convents throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries

reported hundreds of nuns falling into a state of frenzy in w hich the aﬄ icted foam ed at the m outh,

scream ed and convulsed, sexually propositioned priests, and confessed to having carnal relations w ith

devils or Christ. Although, today, these cases w ould suggest serious m ental illness, at the tim e, these

events w ere routinely explained as possession by devilish forces. Sim ilarly, grievous ﬁts by young girls are

believed to have precipitated the w itch panic in N ew England late in the 17th century. Such beliefs in

supernatural causes of m ental illness are still held in som e societies today; for exam ple, beliefs that

supernatural forces cause m ental illness are com m on in som e cultures in m odern-day N igeria.

D ig D e e p e r

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Figure 13.5 Although the cause of dancing m ania,

depicted in this painting, was unclear, the behavior was

attributed to supernatural forces.

D ancing M ania

Betw een the 11th and 17th centuries, a curious epidem ic sw ept across

W estern Europe. G roups of people w ould suddenly begin to dance w ith

w ild abandon. This com pulsion to dance— referred to as dancing m ania—

som etim es gripped thousands of people at a tim e (Figure 13.5). H istorical

accounts indicate that those aﬄ icted w ould som etim es dance w ith

bruised and bloody feet for days or w eeks, scream ing of terrible visions

and begging priests and m onks to save their souls. W hat caused dancing

m ania is not know n, but several explanations have been proposed,

including spider venom and ergot poisoning.

H istorian John W aller has provided a com prehensive and convincing

explanation of dancing m ania that suggests the phenom enon w as

attributable to a com bination of three factors: psychological distress,

social contagion, and belief in supernatural forces. W aller argued that various disasters of the tim e (such as fam ine, plagues,

and ﬂoods) produced high levels of psychological distress that could increase the likelihood of succum bing to an involuntary

trance state. W aller indicated that anthropological studies and accounts of possession rituals show that people are m ore

likely to enter a trance state if they expect it to happen, and that entranced individuals behave in a ritualistic m anner, their

thoughts and behavior shaped by the spiritual beliefs of their culture. Thus, during periods of extrem e physical and m ental

distress, all it took w ere a few people— believing them selves to have been aﬄ icted w ith a dancing curse— to slip into a

spontaneous trance and then act out the part of one w ho is cursed by dancing for days on end.

B io lo g ic a l P e rs p e c tiv e s o f P s y c h o lo g ic a l D is o rd e rs

The biological perspective view s psychological disorders as linked to biological phenom ena, such as genetic factors, chem ical im balances, and

brain abnorm alities; it has gained considerable attention and acceptance in recent decades. Evidence from m any sources indicates that m ost

psychological disorders have a genetic com ponent; in fact, there is little dispute that som e disorders are largely due to genetic factors. For

exam ple, a person's risk of developing schizophrenia increases if a relative has schizophrenia. The closer the genetic relationship, the higher the

risk.

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D espite advances in understanding the biological basis of psychological disorders, the psychosocial perspective is still very im portant. This

perspective em phasizes the im portance of learning, stress, faulty and self-defeating thinking patterns, and environm ental factors. Perhaps the

best w ay to think about psychological disorders, then, is to view them as originating from a com bination of biological and psychological

processes. M any develop not from a single cause, but from a delicate fusion betw een partly biological and partly psychosocial factors.

The diathesis-stress m odel integrates biological and psychosocial factors to predict the likelihood of a disorder. This diathesis-stress m odel

suggests that people w ith an underlying predisposition for a disorder (i.e., a diathesis) are m ore likely than others to develop a disorder w hen

faced w ith adverse environm ental or psychological events (i.e., stress), such as childhood m altreatm ent, negative life events, traum a, and so on.

A diathesis is not alw ays a biological vulnerability to an illness; som e diatheses m ay be psychological (e.g., a tendency to think about life events

in a pessim istic, self- defeating w ay).

The key assum ption of the diathesis-stress m odel is that both factors, diathesis and stress, are necessary in the developm ent of a disorder.

D ifferent m odels explore the relationship betw een the tw o factors: the level of stress needed to produce the disorder is inversely proportional

to the level of diathesis.

M odule 13.2 M odule 13.4