Mental disorder and history : methodological and general issues -- The body perceived -- The vital functions and mental life : sleep, food and drink, sex, death -- Sensory perception and its impairment -- Personality and personal psychology : emotions, character, reasoning

The first substantial history of psychological thought in Classical Greek medicine, showing the relevance of ancient ideas to modern debates.

The first full history of a disease which originated in ancient Greece and has ramifications for contemporary ideas about insanity.

The Hippocratic texts and other contemporary medical sources have often been overlooked in discussions of ancient psychology. They have been considered to be more mechanical and less detailed than poetic and philosophical representations, as well as later medical texts such as those of Galen. This book does justice to these early medical accounts by demonstrating their richness and sophistication, their many connections with other contemporary cultural products and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations. In addition, it reads these sources not only as archaeological documents but also in the light of methodological discussions that are fundamental to the histories of psychiatry and psychology. As a result of this approach, the book will be important for scholars of these disciplines as well as those of Greek literature and philosophy, strongly advocating the relevance of ancient ideas to modern debates.

The historians, classicists and psychiatrists who have come together to produce Mental Disorders in the Classical World aim to explain how the Greeks and their Roman successors conceptualized, diagnosed and treated mental disorders. The Greeks initiated the secular understanding of mental illness, and have left us a large body of penetrating and thought-provoking writing on the subject, ranging in time from Homer to the sixth century AD. With the conceptual basis of modern psychiatry once again under intense debate, we need to learn from other rational approaches even when they lack modern scientific underpinnings. Meanwhile this volume adds a rich chapter to the cultural and medical history of antiquity. The contributors include a high proportion of the best-regarded scholars in this field, together with papers by some of its rising stars.

Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aegina traces the history of conceptions of mental disorder in Graeco-Roman medical writings, from the 1st century BCE to the 7th CE, with detailed studies of all significant authors.