Over 300 years ago, Pinel revolutionized the cruel and inhuman treatment of psychotics with principles that foreshadowed the modern psychoanalytic approach. He believed that psychosis was reversible through the “study of tastes and inclinations” of the patients and the application of “well timed affability and firmness.” He introduced humanistic practices which are the base of present day social psychiatry and milieu therapy. Moreover, Pinel was empirical and research oriented. Pinel's collaborators, Jean-Baptiste and Margarite Poussin, introduced creative, dramatic, and effective interventions which are astonishingly similar to modern psychoanalytic joining techniques.