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The role of mental illness in the European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: An assessment
Author(s) -
Schoeneman Thomas J.
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(197710)13:4<337::aid-jhbs2300130406>3.0.co;2-g
Subject(s) - witch , possession (linguistics) , persecution , mental illness , psychopathology , history , criminology , psychology , psychiatry , mental health , law , philosophy , political science , ecology , linguistics , politics , biology
Historians of psychiatry have propagated the view that the witch hunts of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century Europe were primarily a persecution of the mentally ill and that demonological concepts of possession and witchcraft impeded psychiatric progress for centuries. The author reviews the evidence marshaled by these historians and examines additional historical material bearing on the psychopathological view. He concludes that the role of mental disorder in the witch hunts has been overinflated by authors with an interest in promulgating the medical model of abnormal behavior. Furthermore, the psychopathological paradigm is based on an outmoded philosophy of science, which results in historical distortion and paradoxes, and on restriction and selectivity in the choice of evidence.