Paracelsus' Psychiatry: On the Occasion of the 400th Anniversary of His Book "Diseases That Deprive Man of His Reason" (1567)
GEORGE MORA M.D.1
1 Medical Director, the Astor Home for Children, Rhinebeck, N. Y., and Research Associate, Department of History of Science and Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Although Paracelsus has been called a fore-runner of modern psychiatry, his thinking was and remains highly controversial, as this author points out. His approach to reality was essentially an expression of medieval philosophy; he was, however, among the first to locate the roots of the personality in passions and the will and to consider the pathos of man's existential condition between instincts and spirit.
