A new approach to the history of psychiatry

Abstract

The concepts scientific progress or scientific advancement refer to a directionality of the evolution of the theoretical and practical core of a science. Beneath these concepts the notion of change is submerged in that directionality. The science of medicine framed its history in this notion of progress or advancement. By these means, it is easy to understand how the physician and the general population perceive the current medical model as the result of centuries and millennia of the mentioned progress. Psychiatry, a medical science, is no exception to this concept. This paper has the intention of introducing the history of medicine and psychiatry as a succession of changes, without a particular directionality by contextualizing the successive theories and practices as well as the transitions between models, up until the current medical science model. The objective being to demystify one of the concepts that could work for the inertia of change in the medical and the psychiatric science, in the case where doing so would be considered appropriate.