[Concept of insanity in classical Greece].
This paper offers a picture of Greek views on madness and its therapy from Homer to Plato. In Homeric poems the main model of mental illness is that of a sort of possession of the sick man by a demon or divinity. This view is a common pattern in all primitive or archaic cultures. Correlative with it is a magic therapy, and both Illiad and Odyssey show several instances of treatments of mental diseases by conjuration and prayer. This conception lasted for a long time, mainly in the popular Greek mind, and connected with it there are certain types of religious cults as Corybantic and Asclepius. During V and IV centuries B.C. two new models of madness and its treatment are developed. The first is the somatic and natural model characterized by Hippocratic writings, and the second is Plato's philosophical one. Both oppose themselves each other, and none of them has an influence upon the other. The historian of psychiatry will be surely more interested on such themes as Socratic mayeutic, the Platonic dialectic itself, Aristotle's rhetoric and his interpretation of tragic catharsis. All these subjects, not being directly related with madness therapy, are however concerned with the modern view on it.
D004324:Drama; D000076145:Greece, Ancient; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000266:history*; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D011037:Poetry as Topic; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000266:history
El concepto de locura en Grecia clásica.