Last fall semester I once again taught my general introductory
course: The History of Madness and Psychiatry in the Western
World. The course covers a vast swath of time, beginning with
ancient Palestine and Greece and ending with debate over the
famous case of Osheroff v. Chestnut Lodge. As I sat reading
responses to a final exam essay question in which I asked
students to discuss long-term patterns and trends in the history
of the handling of mental illness, I was struck by a recurring
tendency. Most students portrayed the history of mental health
in one of two ways. One group of students was prone to
interpreting the history of mental illness and its treatment as
one of progressive successes. Their thinking went something like
this. Ancient and medieval healers misguidedly turned to
spurious supernatural and uninformed somatic explanations to
understand and treat disorders. Their ignorance led these
healers to routinely mistreat their patients (eg, inserting
pessaries into “hysteric” women, using leeches t