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Since the beginning of the century there has been a crescendo of attempts to rescue psychiatry from stagnation. Psychiatrists have had a big task in changing the care and treatment of mentally ill persons from mechanical restraints to a human and humane method. Then came the application of dynamic psychology to psychiatry. It is the psychology of mental illness that is of interest to psycho-analysts and to those who work on the basis of dynamic psychology, and this category includes many social workers. My task will be to make this link between mental illness and the stages of individual emotional development and I shall go ahead without being in a position to offer positive proof of the details of my thesis.
First, I must remind you of the psychiatrist's classification of mental disorder. I shall deal summarily with the mental disorders that arise from physical abnormality of the brain, which is the electronic apparatus upon which the mind depends for functioning. The apparatus can be faulty in various ways, hereditarily, congenitally, through infectious disease, because of a tumour, or through degenerative processes such as arteriosclerosis. Also certain general physical disorders affect the electronic apparatus, such as myxoedema, and hormone unbalance associated with the menopause. We must brush aside these considerations, important though they are, in order to get towards the area of mental disorder that is a matter of psychology, of dynamic psychology, of emotional immaturity.
I shall also have to take for granted your knowledge of the effect on mental states of bodily illness, and the threat of bodily illness. It certainly does affect a person's mentality to have cancer or heart disease. Only the psychology of these effects can concern us here now.
A classification starts, then, with these three categories:
Diseases of the brain with consequent mental disorder.
Diseases of the body affecting mental attitudes.
Mental disorders proper, that is, disorders that are no