The Ancient Roots of Psychotherapy

Our medical ancestors sought to heal the mind long before they could treat diseases of the brain. Magicians and priests tended the sick through suggestion, therapeutic bond, and tincture of time, not by science. This has changed. During the last century and a half, our progress in understanding and treating mental suffering has been remarkable by any standard, drawing importantly upon lessons from the asylum, advances in psychology and the science of the brain, and what had been learned by doctors and nurses who treated shell shock during the First World War. Psychotherapy has been described as the oldest branch of medicine, with roots in religion and magic that can be seen in the healing rituals practiced in Greek temples, on the Homeric battlefields, and in the consulting room of Freud. In earliest times, as in our own, the priests and doctors of antiquity drew upon potions, listening and words of consolation, suggestive power, and pragmatic counsel. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] More than four thousand years ago, Egyptians built sleep temples that served as sanctuaries for worship and for the relief of suffering. Temple priests and doctors induced trancelike states in their supplicants, interpreted their dreams, and advised the most auspicious paths through life. Music, painting, and walking in nature were prescribed to calm the anxious and console the grieving. Egyptian doctors, and after them the Greeks, studied their patients as well as healing them. They...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Excerpt freelance health Source Type: news