The Reception of the Ancient Legacy of pre-moder psychosomotic therapy of insanity or the Pluridisciplinary Struggle of the Disciplines of the Soul in German Society at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries
Abstract
The paper analysed the reception and adaptation of the Antique Medecine Legacy with the empasis on the pre-moder psychosomotic therapy at the turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries within the German society. The analysis focusses on the strong influnce the German philosophy and theology of that time played on the interpretation of differents mental diseases.
The interpretation is developped and demonstrated on three interconnected examples of physicians from the territories of the former Holy Roman Empire during the 18th and 19th century. At the same time, these three cases remained heavily infused with early Romantic German philosophy or moral theology that partly challenged the Ancian humoralist legacy.
Those examples are: 1) authors of the so-called dietetical manuals or health catechism who have evolved their medical therapy from the legacy of humoral neo-hippocratism 2) one representant of empirical psychology 3) the first German physician official appointed as a professor of clinical psychiatry at the medical department of Leipzig university whose therapy was under a strong influence of moral theology.