The problem acquired a special sounding at the contemporary stage of development, when the question of the limits of the norm and the boundaries of the human person was raised sharply.
In antiquity, poetic inspiration, the gift of divination, and ecstasy, especially the madness of Dionysus, were considered useful forms of madness.
One of the first to describe insanity was Plato. In the dialogue Phaedrus he distinguishes between two kinds of madness - illness and a divine gift: "Madness, if we consider it a gift from heaven, is the channel through which we receive blessing..., according to our ancestors, madness is nobler than a sober view of things, madness comes from God, while prudence is a feature of man.
Whereas somatic disorder was considered a disease of the soul and, as Plato described in the Timaeus, carried evil, divine insanity provided real knowledge and therefore had a positive meaning.
In the Middle Ages, there was also what was known as sanctioned madness. It included ecstasy, elation, and visions.
But as time went on, insanity was increasingly seen as possession by demons and demons. In addition, the idea that mental illness had been sent to a person for some moral transgression and could be rid of it by exorcism prevailed in the Bible.
In the Middle Ages, insanity was often attempted to be cured by magic and spells in an attempt to expel an evil demon from the patient.
It was believed that there was a possibility of replacing one demon with another, and thus a failed "cure" was not blamed on anyone.
The Age of Enlightenment brought a new definition of insanity and explained insanity as a disorder of the originally healthy mind. Insanity was thus opposed to reason and could be justified and described.
The proof of the impossibility of insanity without reason was given by Arthur Schopenhauer, who justified his theory by stating that animals do not go mad because they do not have reason.
In the nineteenth century, insanity began to be seen as a mental disorder, insane people were turned into patients, and the isolation of the insane was the most common "cure. M. Foucault, in his book The History of Madness in the Classical Era, comes to the fundamental conclusion that madness, as a disease, did not exist before the nineteenth century. The study shows that psychiatry not only began to study mental illnesses in a new way, but that it also created them.
