Animism (psychosomatics)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Animism is a modern, non around 1780 in France to refer to the Anima teaching of Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734) introduced term, after taking account of the mind-body problem immortal all life processes of a, like man educated soul made become. The term is derived from the Latin anima 'soul', 'breath', 'breath of air', 'wind'. The anthropomorphic theory regards the soul as the supreme principle of the living organism. This term can also be traced back to Aristotle (around 384–322 BC) and the pre-Socratics . Aristotle distinguished between an animal and a vegetative soul, see the theory of layers that goes back to him .

Psychological, ethnological and natural philosophical preliminary remarks

Stahl's psychologically interpretable theory is of course also related to certain general characteristics of animism . According to Eugen Drewermann , it is the essence of animism in psychological terms that all surrounding living beings are projectively experienced as animated by a basic human ability and, by identification, as equated with the (inanimate) things in the environment. With this Drewermann tries to free the term animism from its broader pejorative meaning, which recognizes in it only a preliminary stage of scientific knowledge or an undeveloped attitude in so-called "primitive peoples" or a development theory in children. Animism is related to the dream experience , in which the limits of individual consciousness towards the outside world are lifted and the feeling of an original unity and mystical connection , even a harmony between psyche and cosmos, exists. This ability includes divinatory properties, e.g. B. in the Orphic or in the Hellenistic mysteries . The somatism that has existed since Hippocrates of Kos up to modern times was expanded and enriched through the adoption of pre-Socratic basic assumptions of Greek natural philosophy and its doctrine of primary substances .

Stahl's teachings

Stahl's theory shook the old doctrines of disease, which had been based on a somatism since Hippocrates . In addition to the somatic view of mental illnesses, which Stahl as " sympathetic " - i.e. H. Secondly caused by disease of organs - looked at, he also pointed to a primary idiopathic genesis of the nervous diseases, which he described as " pathetic " and which can also be regarded as functional - according to Stahl, that is, without organ involvement. The rational soul even effects the unconscious movements of the organism. Even if these teachings were already highly controversial during Stahl's lifetime, for example by his college friend Friedrich Hoffmann , medicine has always been confronted with an active, independent spiritual force. Stahl also called the principle of the soul anima rationalis, vis vitalis, natura or spiritus animalis, which is superordinate to the mechanical and chemical processes in the body as a directing authority, i.e. is neither mechanical nor chemical. Before Stahl, the term Spiritus animalis was already used by René Descartes and after him z. B. used by David Hume . Robert Whytt took a critical look at it. According to Stahl, the physical (mechanical) and chemical reactions were kept going by the anima rationalis. Illness represents a fight of the soul against the harmful influences. Illness symptoms are therefore not only a sign of illness, but also an expression of healing efforts of the anima rationalis. These efforts may also go beyond the goal because the anima may be fooled by emotions such as fright and anger. These would have a disease-causing effect on the anima. Mechanical influences are not disputed by steel, but are regarded as insufficient for the interpretation of organic processes.

reception

The distinction between Stahl's two different operating principles led to two different research approaches. The working principle of the "anima" led to later psychological approaches. The conventional operating principle of iatrophysics and iatrochemistry and the differentiation from the anima principle activated somatic research in the following period .

That many theorists of psychogenic causation appeared in the 18th century, such as Christian Gottlieb Ludwig (1709–1773), Johann Friedrich Zückert (1737–1778), Johann Gottfried Langermann (1768–1832) or Andrew Harper († 1790) is e.g. B. attributed to steel by Erwin H. Ackerknecht . Harper is already seen as a representative of the psychics . In the period that followed, psychics tended to take up the psychological and psychosocial (moral) side of mental illness. The primary idiopathic genesis of nervous diseases was later adopted as the doctrine of endogenous psychoses by classical German psychiatry .

The somatic approaches that resulted from Stahl's teaching were further explored from different directions. The ability that Stahl regarded as the divine operating principle of the soul (anima) was subsequently referred to more neutrally as “force”, which also meant that a scientific approach was not excluded. This stage of development is also known as psychodynamism . - The vitalists of the Montpellier school in particular have had a decisive influence on the functional and physiological research approach from a scientific point of view. Vitalism, which is often colloquially equated with animism in medical parlance, is differentiated from animism insofar as, according to the state of the physiological experiments by Francis Glisson , Robert Whytt and Albrecht von Haller, mental illnesses are no longer understood as the direct effect of a metaphysically hidden rational soul were. These diseases, like the rational soul, were seen rather as the expression of an overarching principle vital and thus accessible to empirical research. Stahl's theories also attained practical and general medical significance with the Scottish clinicians Robert Whytt (1714–1766) and William Cullen (1710–1790). For them the functional point of view was also significant from a scientific point of view. The psychological forces at work here were understood physically in the sense of a causal connection as organic-neurological disorders, see the term neurosis, which was decisively coined by Cullen . Whytt and Cullen can therefore also be called early somatics .

See also

literature

  • Rothschuh, Karl Eduard : From the spiritus animalis to the nerve action stream . Ciba-Zschr. No. 89, 1958, page 2967 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christa Habrich : Animism. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 65 f.
  2. ^ A b Peters, Uwe Henrik : Lexicon of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Medical Psychology . Urban & Fischer, Munich 6 2007; ISBN 978-3-437-15061-6 ; Anima rationalis and animism, page 37 f. (on-line)
  3. ↑ Brockhaus, FA: Brockhaus Encyclopedia. The big foreign dictionary. Brockhaus Leipzig, Mannheim 19 2001, ISBN 3-7653-1270-3 ; Page 102
  4. ↑ a b Hofstätter, Peter R. (Ed.): Psychology . The Fischer Lexicon, Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1972, ISBN 3-436-01159-2 ; (a) Re. “Layer theory”: pages 285 ff., 318, 355; (b) Re. “Animism”, “anima” “Mysteries”: pages 47, 145, 205, 286
  5. ↑ a b c d Ackerknecht, Erwin H .: Brief history of psychiatry . Enke, Stuttgart 3 1985, ISBN 3-432-80043-6 ; (a) Re. "Double development possibilities of illness ( somatogenesis versus psychogenesis )": page 35 f .; (b) Re. “Theorists of psychogenic causation”: page 35; (c) Re. “Influencing the vitalists in the school of Montpellier”: page 35
  6. ↑ Drewermann, Eugen : Depth Psychology and Exegesis 1 . The truth of forms. Dream, myth, fairy tale, saga and legend. dtv non-fiction book 30376, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-30376-X , © Walter-Verlag, Olten 1984, ISBN 3-530-16852-1 ; Pages 123 ff.
  7. ^ Stahl, Georg Ernst : Theoria medica vera . 3 vol., Hall 1707
  8. ↑ a b c d Dörner, Klaus : Citizens and Irre . On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. [1969] Fischer Taschenbuch, Bücher des Wissens, Frankfurt / M 1975, ISBN 3-436-02101-6 ; Pages 55 f., 71, 122, 202
  9. ↑ Peters, Uwe Henrik : Dictionary of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology . Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 3 1984; Lexicon-Stw. "Psychic," page 436