THE RENAISSANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 



States of ecstasy and trance were sought for prophesy and 

 religious rites. Strange notions originated as of the influ- 

 ence of the moon, perpetuated in the term lunacy. The 

 mentally disordered seemed dehumanized. The humane 

 conception begins with Pinel (1791), who first dared to 

 release the shackles of the maniac and to consider the true 

 sources of disturbed behavior. In the absence of a clue to 

 the vicissitudes of mind, such belated theories could for a 

 time command attention as those of Mesmer, claiming an 

 "animal magnetism" paralleling the physical force, but 

 streaming through his person and by that route inducing 

 and allaying what we plainly recognize as hysterical mani- 

 festations. Such a concept as hysteria (retaining in its 

 etymology the false notion of a connection with the uterus) 

 in its modern renaissance compasses a large range of aber- 

 rant phenomena. Abnormal psychology has been natural- 

 ized into a confederation of disciplines conferring insight 

 into human nature. 



How much of this enlightenment is traceable to the 

 Freudian invasion is not easy to determine. What may be 

 termed the clinical phase of psychology was certain to 

 arrive, even if there had been no Freud; it was written 

 in the course of the emergent psychology, whose genetic 

 stages we have been roughly and eclectically following. 

 But the fact remains that the essential Freudian concept 

 had a revitalizing influence similar to that of the Darwinian 

 contribution. Yet this, too, has its antecedents in sporadic 

 points of insight from Galen on: that the suff"erings of 

 mind were not only closely related to bodily infirmities 

 and disqualifications, but also reacted upon them — a tenet 

 now formulated as the psychogenic principle. It took on a 

 novel Freudian form when hysterical lameness or blind- 

 ness — a bodily sym'ptom — was referred to a mental me- 

 chanism — a subconscious repression, expressive of a motive 

 to avoid, to shut out, to escape a situation too harrowing 



[71] 



