PSYX 340 Psychological Disorders · Unit 1: Foundations, anxiety and trauma · on Exam 1
1.1 What is abnormal? History of the field
Study notes for What is abnormal? History of the field in PSYX 340 Psychological Disorders at Montana State University: the big ideas, a worked example, common mistakes and an exam tip. The same topic has endless practice questions and flashcards in Mathub.
Big ideas
- Comer’s working definition uses the four Ds: deviance (different from the norms of the culture), distress (unpleasant and upsetting to the person), dysfunction (interferes with daily functioning) and danger (to self or others). No single D is enough on its own, and every one depends on context and culture.
- Ancient views: trephination (holes chipped in the skull, possibly to release spirits); Hippocrates explained abnormality as an imbalance of four bodily humors (a somatogenic, natural explanation).
- Middle Ages in Europe: demonology returned, with exorcism, and outbreaks of mass madness (tarantism, lycanthropy). Renaissance: Johann Weyer argued the mind can be sick like the body; asylums spread (London’s Bethlehem Hospital, “Bedlam”), often as warehouses.
- Moral treatment (19th century): Philippe Pinel unchained patients in Paris, William Tuke founded the York Retreat, Benjamin Rush brought it to the US and Dorothea Dix campaigned for state hospitals. It declined as hospitals became overcrowded and underfunded.
- Early 20th century: the somatogenic perspective gained ground when general paresis was traced to syphilis; the psychogenic perspective grew from Mesmer, Charcot, Breuer and Freud (hypnotism, then psychoanalysis). From the 1950s, antipsychotic drugs enabled deinstitutionalization, and today most treatment is outpatient, often under managed care.
Worked example
A man spends hours each day meditating on a mountaintop and fasting for days, as his religious community expects of its monks. He is content and fully able to meet his responsibilities. Is this abnormal by the four Ds?
Show the solution
No. The behavior deviates from mainstream norms but not from his own culture’s, he is not distressed, it does not impair his functioning, and it endangers no one. The four Ds are judged together and in context, which is why deviance alone never settles the question.
Common mistakes
- Treating “statistically rare” as the same thing as abnormal. Rare talents are rare too.
- Mixing up the two early-20th-century camps: somatogenic means a physical cause, psychogenic means a psychological cause.
- Crediting deinstitutionalization with better care. Many people released from hospitals ended up homeless or in jail when community care failed to follow.
- Forgetting that the four Ds are Comer’s framing; know it the way the lecture presents it.
Exam tipExpect name-to-idea matching: Pinel and Tuke with moral treatment, Dix with state hospitals, Hippocrates with humors, Weyer with the first mind-as-sick argument, general paresis with the somatogenic breakthrough.
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