Versuch einer Pathologie und Therapie der Geistes- und Gemüthskrankheiten
[2] The main ideas include a balance and imbalance of mental health and the possibility of rebalancing with the help of physical, medical and therapeutic interventions.
[2] The author Alexander Haindorf was one of the most important Jewish persons of 19th century in the Prussian Province of Westphalia.
[3] He successfully visited the Gymnasium, the highest secondary schooling in Germany, and continued to study, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and psychology in Würzburg, Erlangen, Bamberg and Heidelberg.
[4][5] During his time in Würzburg, Haindorf was taught by the German philosopher Jakob Wagner whom he met again when doing his doctorate 1810 in Heidelberg.
[1] Alexander Haindorf was one of the first to suggest that a serious cause of mental illness, along with physiological reasons, is inner conflict within the individual.
[9] German psychiatric literature in the 18th and early 19th century often described spiritual or demonic reasons for mental illness, standing in contrast to Haindorfs biological, science-based approach to the matter.
The "father of American psychiatry" Dr Benjamin Rush released his first psychiatric textbook, which was the first in the United States, one year after Haindorf in 1812.
[10] Other well-known psychologists at that time, for example, Ernst Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) considered mental illness to be a result of developmental problems.
Friedrich Groos (1768–1852) defined mental health as a state of harmony between natural forces and the behaviour of an individual.
The second smaller part of chapter three addresses sickness in the feeling of self including different kinds, causes and treatments.
This book consists of chapters covering imagination, clear thinking, phantasy and decision making.
[2] The first chapter discusses mental diseases including dreaming, the active soul and sickness of the brain.
[11] He compared life to of an individual to a galvanic process acting between positive and negative poles; forces of composition and decomposition, or creation and destruction.
He wrote about the connections between hormones in the nervous system, the brain's physical attributes, and born disabilities with mental well-being.
[2] Some people, according to Haindorf, are born unbalanced and thus are unable to regain balance during their lifetime and remain mentally diseased.
Contributions to the cultural history of medicine and surgery in France and particularly its capital city) Göttingen,1815, which was the second out of his numerous publications.
