Where on the internet can I find information on the history of abnormal human behavior? I have to write a one page essay for a college course and cannot find any information anywhere. Thanks.

-- Lori Bowman (lfbowman@triad.rr.com), January 07, 2003

Answers

I don't think the internet is the appropriate place to look. Most textbooks on psychopathology will provide some history, as will histories focused specifically on important milestones in the history of abnormal psychology/psychopathology. I recommend Gregory Zilboorg's A History of Medical Psychology as a place to start. Use the WorldCat, which should be available to you through your library databases, to find this book and others on the same topic. You can also check histories of clinical psychology--there are histories by Virginia Sexton and by Eugene Walker, among others. A final place to check is an encyclopedia of psychology--where you can check for articles on abnormal psychology and psychopathology as well as articles on specific forms of mental illness.

Another approach is to try the internet with more focused searches. Many sites devoted to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Ameerican Psychiatric Association (DSM) have histories of specific mental illnesses. For example, searching Google with the words "post traumatic stress disorder history" I found the following history:

http://www.ptsdmanual.com/chap1.htm

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), January 08, 2003.