Explain why in ancient times abnormal behavior was attributed to possession by a demon or god and describe how exorcism was administered by shamans and priests as the primary type of treatment for demonic possession.
Describe the important contributions from 460 B.C. to 200 A.D. of Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Galen to the conceptualization of the nature and causes of abnormal behavior.
Discuss how mental disorders were viewed during the Middle Ages.
Give examples of mass madness or mass hysteria and summarize the explanations offered for this unusual phenomenon.
Outline the contributions in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance of Paracelsus, Teresa of Avila, Johan Weyer, Reginald Scot, and St. Vincent de Paul, all of whom argued that those showing abnormal behavior should be seen as mentally ill and treated with humane care.
Describe the inhumane treatment that mental patients received in early “insane asylums” in Europe and the United States.
Describe the humanitarian reforms in the treatment of mental patients that were instigated by Philippe Pinel, William Tuke, Benjamin Rush, and Dorothea Dix.
Explain how both the discovery of a biological basis for general paresis and a handful of other disorders (such as, the senile mental disorders, toxic mental disorders, and certain types of mental retardation), contributed in a major way to the development of a scientific approach to abnormal psychology as well as to the emergence of modern experimental science which was largely biological.
Distinguish between biological and non-biological versions of medical-model thinking about psychopathology.
Trace the important events in the development of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic perspective.
Contrast the biological and psychodynamic views of abnormal disorders.
Describe how the techniques of free association and dream analysis helped both analysts and their patients.
List the major features of the behavioral perspective.
Discriminate between classical and operant conditioning.
Explain the problems associated with interpreting historical events.
