models of mind and mental illness in ancient greece: ii. the platonic model

MODELS OF MIND AND MENTAL ILLNESS I N ANCIENT GREECE: 11. T H E PLATONIC MODEL*

BENNETT SIMON

Harvard Medical School**

The following essay is part of an extended study of the history of ideas about mind and mental illness in classical Greek antiquity. Previous essays have taken up the notions of mental function, mental disturbance, and treatment that are embedded in the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey (25, 27). Other work in progress deals with the medical-physiological viewpoints, and with the social psychological context of philosophical notions in this area.

This essay concentrates on the study of Plato, and is written with several aims. The first is to make explicit the core notions about mind, madness, and the treatment of madness that are to be found in the Platonic dialogues, and to indicate how much the definitions of mind and madness are interdependent. Many previous discussions of the place of Plato in the history of psychiatry and the history of psychology have tended to ignore this essential unity within Plato. In recent years, several outstand- ing works of scholarship, particularly those of Dodds (3), Lain-Entralgo (17), and Leibbrand and Wettley (18)) have considerably enlarged our awareness of the need to examine these two aspects of Plato’s thought together. Drawing in part upon these writers, the present essay aims to discuss Plato in a manner that will further clarify our understanding of his relevance to conflict psychologies, especially to psychoanalysis. These core notions about mind and madness are what I term a ‘(model,” and the delineation of this model is done in part with the purpose of showing that this “model” is an important basic structure in the edifice of Freud’s thought.

A second aim of this paper, which is, I believe, a wholly original contribution, is to argue that the Platonic “model” of mind and madness, is described in language pointing to an important unconscious assumption, or unconscious fantasy. I n the psychoanalytic literature, the germinal work of Hans Kelsen, “Platonic Love” (15), and a recent essay by Bradley (2) greatly facilitated this formulation. While i t is not possible in this paper to develop fully this line of thought, I believe i t has rich implications for: 1) the understanding of Plato as a person whose philosophy is intertwined with his inner psychological needs, 2) elucidating some important cultural conflicts in the Athens of Plato’s day, 3) providing a psychoanalytically- informed approach to classifying ideas about mind and madness (or mind and body) as they appear in different epochs according to the most prominent unconscious fantasy underlying them.

*Part I., “The Homeric Model of Mind,” appeared in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 11, no. 4, 303-314 (October 1966). Section 2 of “The Platonic Model” will appear in the January 1973 issue.

**Pre ared while the author was in the Department of Psychiatry, Montefiore Hospital and Medical d n t e r ; and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, N. Y.). Professor E. A. Havelock (Yale) and Dr. William Grossman (Montefiore) were especially helpful in their critical discussion of earlier drafts.

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The third goal of this essay (cf. the concluding section) is to propose some explanation about why, despite major differences between Plato and Freud in practical aims, in moral outlook, and in cultural setting, there should be so many important areas of congruence in their theories. The hypothesis offered emphasizes a point made by the author in previous articles (25, 27), namely that the actual craft, or working activity, of the philosopher (or psychotherapist) is an important de- terminant of the theoretical schema of mind that he develops.

By way of introduction to the body of the paper, I wish to note that I have written in order to allow readers of various disciplines to follow the lines of argument. Accordingly, I have included a good deal of background material on early Greek philosophy, and on Plato in particular. Much of this may be redundant or dis- tracting to those more expert in these areas, but, my selection and emphasis in this material will a t least alert those readers to my (inevitable) biases in the sometimes controversial realm of Platonic scholarship.

(I) “The Discovery of the Mind:” The Pre-Socratic Background of Plato 012. M i n d and Madness: The following comments represent, in condensed form, the viewpoint of a

number of classical scholars and students of classical philosophy about the state of Greek thought shortly before the time of Plato. In particular, it is helpful to form some picture of the activities of the so-called “pre-Socratic philosophers” in order to understand the context of Plato on mind and madness.

Homer composed his epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, toward the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century B.C. The record of Greek thought in those intervening centuries, all agree, is an incomplete one. Poetry from the seventh century has survived, and more from the sixth and fifth, including, of course, Athen- ian drama. From sometime in the later sixth century and well into the fifth century, fragments have survived of the works of a rather heterogeneous group of thinkers who have come to be known as the “Pre-Socratics.” Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaximander, and Anaxagoras are the major figures in this group. The life span of several, such as Parmenides and Anaxagoras, over- lapped with that of Socrates (16).

What scholars such as Havelock, Snell and others have convincingly argued is that as recently as two to three centuries before Socrates the language of Greek thought was still very much what might be loosely termed “concrete.” (12, 28). I n respect to the physical world, terms as seemingly elementary as “space,” “motion,” “direction,” and even “color” are not to be found in the language of Homer and of the poets who soon followed him. Terms such as “mental” (versus “physical”), “mind,” “emotion,” are similarly not to be found. There is not even an abstract term for “to see” or for “vision,” in Homer but rather a classification of visual activity along concrete lines, with verbs denoting “to peer,” “to notice,” “to stare,” “to glare,” and so forth. The evidence for this conclusion about Homer comes not only from the lack of abstract terms in Homer, but also from the struggles of the pre-Socratic philosophers to coin such terms. It is not the case that Homer is poetry, and hence, not the most likely place in which to look for certain kinds of abstract language, for otherwise, when abstract vocabulary is found (in later writers) it should appear without any special fanfare. But the sense of struggle within the

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extant writing of the pre-Socratics and the contorted language that they seem to use bear witness to a creative struggle-the struggle to define a new discourse. That new discourse became the basic abstract and scientific vocabulary of Western thought, and its development can be traced (albeit only partially) through the pre-Socratics, and into Plato. Aristotle marks a certain terminus, for he is the first who seems to be able to take for granted a vocabulary of abstract discourse (12).

Where this approach to the pre-Socratics differs from most interpretations (from Aristotle on) is that it diminishes the importance of any particular doctrines held by individual thinkers and stresses the importance of the development of a mode of discourse about philosophical, physical, and psychological issues. It is not SO

important that Empedocles argued that all things are created out of earth, air, fire, and water, but rather that he helped develop the concept of “elements.”

As part and parcel of the effort to work with a new kind of discourse, analytic, logical, abstract, various of these thinkers attacked and disparaged the mythopoetic mode of discourse and of thought. I n the writings of the pre-Socratics, we find explicitly and implicitly stated, the notion that there are two kinds of thought (or discourse)-e.g., the “mythological” and the “physiological” (phusis - nature) and the judgment that the mythological is inferior. We find, for example, the distinction drawn between the two modes of thought along the axis of “asleep” and “awake.” Heraclitus speaks of those who do not speak with his new logos as “asleep” or in a dream. Parmenides speaks of the two ways: “seeming” and “as things really are.” I n Xenophanes we find an attack on the relativistic and idiosyncratic aspects of mythopoetic thought. Furthermore, there is the clear implication (e.g., Xenophanes) that those who think according to the more abstract mode are superior to other thinkers, such as the poets.

Anthropomorphic versions of physical processes were rejected by several of these thinkers, and the grossly sexual nature of the mythological creation stories was condemned. Hesiod (7th century B.C.), a poet perhaps even contemporaneous with Homer, records creation myths such as the separation of earth and sky, which entail intercourse, castration of Uranus, etc. Such tales seem to be the objects of attack, by the pre-Socratics not only on certain moralistic grounds, but because they sense the need for a new language, one of process, and transformation, to deal with ordered, abstract and systematic discourse about the physical world.

The beginning definition of these two modes of thought, with the down-grading of the mythopoetic, crudely anthropomorphic, and the realm of poetry had several consequences. It was the beginning, or first articulation, of a major value inherent in Western thought-the superiority of reason and of abstract, scientific thinking.

A second consequence of this distinction was that i t posed a problem, which, first taken up in Plato, became a fundamental question in psychology and psychiatry: how to account for and deal with the fact ,that man is a t once capable of both modes of mental functioning : sophisticated, scientific, and mathematical thinking and of impulse-ridden, fantasy-dominated thinking.

Though only tantalizing fragments remain, scholars believe that the pre- Socratics had a great deal to say about “mind.” In their writings, such terms as “mind” begin to be defined. Though the Greek language had, in the time of Homer, a rather vivid vocabulary of mental and affective functioning, it was not one that clearly differentiated structures, functions, and processes. Terms such as now

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(mind) or psuche (breath of life) in Homer are far more fluid in definition, than in later Greek. Thus, in Homer, the term nous subsumes a mental structure, an organ, and the end result of the functioning of the organ, (analogous to the way we speak of (‘I have a mind to do something.”) By the time of Plato nous is a sub-division of psuche, a structure that is part of a larger structure. In between, we can witness how the pre-Socratics took such common usage terms of the Greek language and began to develop what must have appeared to their contemporaries as strange new uses and senses.

Anaxagoras, for example, speaks of nous (mind) as a cosmic force: All other things have a portion of everything, but mind alone is without bound- ary and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is all alone by itself. For it is the most delicate of all things and the most pure, it has all knowledge about everything. And the greatest power; and mind controls all things, both the greater and the smaller that have life. . . . (16, p. 372)

Anaxagoras, in this and other passages, is developing a view of (‘mind” as a powerful, creative and organizing force in the physical universe. What is important for our purposes is not so much the cosmic theory, but rather that he is also defining the “mind” of the person in a new way : mind is separate, radically different from everything else; i t is actively controlling and organizing. This is a direct contrast to Homer, where the descriptions of mental life tend to emphasize the passivity of the person in respect to his mental life. Significant, too, is that the ‘(mind” that the pre- Socratics are struggling to define is itself an abstraction, and is simultaneously being characterized as that which abstracts.

The “inheritance” of the pre-Socratics was the framework within which Plnto carried on his philosophical inquiry. The main features of their activity were:

They were developing the basic abstract and definitional vocabulary of all later philosophical, psychological, and physical thought. They defined “mental” and “mind” and characterized that “mind” as that which organizes and abstracts. They distinguished two modes of thinking, or two modes of discourse- e.g. the “physiological” VS. “mythological.” They asserted the superiority of the former (also caIIed the language of “awake,” of (‘true being,” etc.). And they asserted the superiority of those who think abstractly, as well as the superiority of the abstract mode of thought. The philosopher is the one who ‘(abstracts,” and is superior to the poet.

To summarize:

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Thus, the work of the pre-Socratics was one crucial element in the setting of Plato’s philosophical activity.

I n addition, one must add that in the latter half of the fifth century, there was an intense concern, too, with political and moral problems, as these were developed in Athenian tragedy, lyric poetry, and the activities of the Sophists (and in changing law codes as well). Issues of self-control, moral judgment, individual and collective impulsivity and restraint, were very much in the air. Platonic philosophy took its


origins in these two concerns of Greek thought-the effort of the pre-Socratics to crystallize out and define abstract thinking and abstract language, and the pressing ethical and moral issues of the day. In a most schematic way, we can look a t Plato as the one who defined the abstract and the rational as equivalent to the moral good. He equated self-knowledge with self-restraint, and proclaimed that knowledge is virtue. From the viewpoint of the history of ideas about mind and mental illness, what is important is that all these terms were equated with sanity. Lack of linowl- edge and the irrational, were equated with moral evil, and then, with madness.

With these introductory comments, we turn to a more detailed examination of Plato on mind and madness.

A caveat: When discussing Plato’s “thought” one must keep in mind that we are not dealing with a fixed body of premises and conclusions. The dialogues cover a span of many years, and Plato’s thinking on many issues underwent considerable change. Nor can we talk of a simple “evolution” of his thought, since in some areas there were changes in direction, reversals, and return to earlier positions. In the ensuing discussion, we attempt to present a view of what appear to be the main issues in Platonic thought, and give some indication of the shifting balances within Plato’s work in regard to these issues. The whole question of “the unity of Plato’s thought,” let alone the problem of the relationship between Socratic and Platonic thinking, is a complex and vexing one. The assumption in this paper is that there is a considerable coherence and unity to Plato’s thought, and that the seeming contradictions and inconsistencies are to be taken as evidence of a thinker who is con- tinually struggling with various solutions to the same problems. As for the differ- entiation between Socrates and Plato, for the purpose of this paper, it is more important to blur the distinction than to attempt to sharpen it.

(11) The Greek term, in Plato, that is here translated as “mind” is “psyche” (psuche).

It is the core psychological and psychiatric term in Plato. It is usually rendered as “soul,” and as used in Plato does also connote several aspects of the English term ‘(soul,” e.g. the immortal part of the man, some sort of “spiritual” essence of the man. In Plato, however, any attempt to distinguish sharply between “mind” and “soul” is meaningless, and in fact, it is crucial for Plato that the “mental” is also immortal. Psuche is an ancient term, much used in Homer. But, there, it denotes primarily “the breath of life,” and is part of a vocabulary that does not distinguish “mental” and “physical” as discrete categories. Scholars have now documented how this term underwent a considerable transformation in meaning from Homer to Plato. But, it is also important to recognize that i t is not a static, neatly defined concept in Plato. It is fair to say that much of Plato’s philosophical activity was involved in the task of defining and characterizing the nature of the psuche.

What follows, then is a survey of the main features of Plato’s approach to understanding the psuche.

That psuche is a structure is implied throughout all of the Platonic writings. Though clearly not material in nature, a variety of analogies are tentatively ap- plied, such as a container, a wax tablet, or a bird cage. By a structure is meant that psuche is a “something” that is stable, and is composed of various parts functioning in relation to each other. Comparisons of psuche to machines are not found in Plato.

The Platonic Model of Mind:

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Another major contrast between Homer and Plato is suggested by a vocabulary of activity, (instead of the passive receptiveness that is in Homer), that attends descriptions of psuche. The psuche exercises control over incoming stimuli, digests them and determines their fate inside the mind. If it were otherwise, the mind would soon be filled up with sensations, as if it were a Trojan horse full of warriors (Theate- tus 184D). In other images, functions of the mind are compared to a scribe writing in a book (Philebus 39A), or the mind is a kind of a wax slate where one can compare new imprints with the old imprints (Theatetus 191ff.).

In the Phaedrus (245C-D) psuche is “self-moving,” another metaphor pointing to its activity. In general, one finds descriptions that indicate that psuche ideally is capable of active learning, knowing and mastering. It can operate by dissecting, defining and abstracting the general from the particular. The active, organizing aspect of psuche is seen in Plato where he describes the tasks of its rational portion: “RIIanagement, rule, deliberation and other such tasks” (Republic 353D). (Note, too, Republic 51SB.)

It can be seen that the notion of the activity of mind, especially as exemplified in the negative analogy-the mind is not a Trojan horse full of sensations that have come in who lea l so implies a radical separation between “knower” and “known,” between subject and object. As a corollary to the split between mind and its objects is the idea that the activities and processes of mind are unique and qualitatively different from other processes and activities. In Homer, mental processes are readily compared to events in the physical, animal and human social worlds, and the reverse is also true (the speed of Hera’s flight is compared to the speed of a man envisioning a journey in his mind’s eye (IZiad 15: 78ff.)). One finds no uniquevocabulary of mental process in Homer.

Anaxagoras’ characterization of nous (“mind”, vide supra, p. 392) as “most delicate and most pure, mixed with nothing” is a way-station in the effort to define and label mind as sui generis. This fragment (and others of his) also suggest a de- liberate effort to move away from anthropomorphisms, which are the main process terms in mythopoetic thinking.

It seems for Plato that the most prominent metaphors used to suggest the uniqueness of mind are drawn from mathematics. Mathematics may provide some sort of model for non-material, non-anthropomorphic discourse about mind. This need may be one major reason for the central role that Plato assigns to arithmetic and geometry (in the Republic) for the education of the philosopher-kings. I n the M e n o one finds Plato using the notion “irrational number,” e.g. the d3, (in Greek, “numbers not expressible” as simple ratios) side-by-side with the idea of a radically different notion of virtue. Plato seeks a virtue that is not the simple addition, or ratio, of particular virtues, but the definition of virtue, virtue in the abstract.

Repeatedly Plato emphasizes that, that which mind, or psuche apprehends is non-physical : “the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colorless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to rational mind, the pilot of the soul” (Phaedrus 247C). If we refer back to the earlier comments (pp. 390-92) on the pre- Socratics, i.e. viewing their ‘philosophy’ as an attempt to coin the terms of abstract discourse, we can understand Plato’s work as a further extension of that effort. Side-by-side with an evolving notion of mind as unique, radically separate and non- physical, is a notion tha t the objects of knowledge are to be similarly described. Plato

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has several terms for these ‘intangible essences’: true being, ideas and f o r m s (e.g. the idea of the good; the form of justice). Havelock’s contention is that ideas and forms should be seen as way-stations to the terms “abstraction” and “definition.” Note that Plato does not have these latter terms. “Definition” first appears in Aristotle. With this interpretation of Plato, rather than seeing him as an “idealist philosopher,” we can see him as struggling to find a way to describe and understand the relationship between definition of things and things; Plato is “discovering” the abstract, and, as such, is unclear as to where the “abstract” belongs-to use later terms, does it have a logical or ontological status?

Plato’s notions about the immortality of psuche (e.g. Phaedo) can also be viewed as an expression of the separateness and uniqueness of rational mental life. Here Plato reverts to the language of mythopoetic thinking, but the notion of immortality of the soul, as well as Plato’s use of mathematics, can serve as a metaphor to convey a sense of the uniqueness of mind and of mental process.

* The idea of the immortality of the soul brings us to two related questions: the divisions of the psuche, and the relationship between psuche and body. These two questions in turn lead to an examination of Plato’s views on conflict and on moral controls.

I n a much-quoted passage, the description of Socrates’ last day before his execution, (Phaedo 97 ff.), Socrates relates how he first came to be attracted to the works of Anaxagoras, and of his subsequent disenchantment. Anaxagoras was writing about mind and ascribing to mind important and unique properties. This made sense to the young Socrates, apparently fitting in with his own speculations. However, to his disappointment, he learned that Anaxagoras was not to deal with what for Socrates was the major issue-what is the good, how should a man know it, and why does a man wish to pursue the good. He protests that Anaxagoras could give what we might call a “physical” or “material” explanation of Socrates’ behavior-sitting in prison for submitting to the judgment of the Athenians and not fleeing into exile for his life. It is as if Anaxagoras would “explain” Socrates sitting in prison by describing how bones, joints, and sinews are involved in the posture of sitting. “Surely this is a strange confusion of conditions and causes,” Socrates protests about (his version of) Anaxagoras’ theories. For Anaxagoras has omitted the motives of behavior.

Whether or not all of this is true about Anaxagoras is beside the point: what the anecdote does indicate is the thrust of the Socratic and Platonic inquiry. What makes men behave and choose on moral and ethical issues, as they do, and how can we get them to make better choices? Socrates, from the beginning and Plato, too, dealt with man in conflict and in this context, we come to the more famous of the Platonic descriptions of psuche: psuche as composed of parts that are sometimes in conflict and sometimes cooperate.

The most famous of the schemes for subdividing psuche is that developed in the Republic:

the rational part (logistikon) the affective part (thumoeides) the appetitive part (epithumetikon)

Here conflict is conceptualized as a struggle between the rational and the appetitive portions, with each of these trying as i t were, to enlist the affective portion on its

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side. I n this schema, the appetitive portion is representative of the claims of the body and of bodily needs, while the logistikon represents the claims of the higher mental functions. Note that elsewhere, as in the Phaedo, instead of dividing psuche in portions, Plato describes conflict in terms of the division between the claims of the immortal psuche and those of the earth-bound body. In the scheme in the Republic the metaphors attending upon the appetitive portion describe i t as the animal (or wild animal) portion, or as the imperative, childish, demanding portion. One image of the psuche that Plato constructs is composed of three parts, corresponding to his tripartite division:

The first: “a manifold and many-headed beast” that has a ring of heads of tame and wild beasts that can change them and cause to spring forth from itself all such growths-(corresponding to the appetitive). The second: a lion-(the “spirited” or “affective” portion). The third: a man, though much smaller than the lion. (The rational.) (Republic 538.)

These three portions have different functions, and, in fact, different relation- ships to the real world. In general, throughout Plato, there is the assumption that the baser portions of psuche are suited to apprehend the baser portions of the world, and have different aims-e.g. the appetitive part apprehends sensory perceptions, sensual demands, and concrete, particular, mortal objects. The rational portion is equipped for and is capable of knowing the most general and the most abstract, the timeless, the non-bodily, as epitomized in phrases such as the “forms” (ideas) (c.f. Timaeus passim, The Republic passim, Phaedrus 247C). “Becoming” versus “being” is another expression of this contrast.

The contrasting attributes of higher and lower forms of mental activity are summarized as follows :

Baser Parts of M i n d Appetitive Somatic Being born and perishing Opinion (doza) Pictorial, illusory Shadow Asleep, dreaming Childish Imitation Flux Conflict Heterosexual

versus Higher Parts of M i n d Rational Psychic True being True knowledge (episteme) Ideational Sun Awake Adult Abstract understanding Stability Harmony Homosexual and asexual

These contrasts will be taken up in greater detail in the next section. A particularly important set of terms is:

l j doxa-“seeming’f “appearance’l-usually rendered as “opinion”-refers to random impressions and thought, unreflective, unorganized knowledge.


2) orthe - doxa-“correct opinion,” correct, or truthful body of knowledge (as in various crafts) but organized according to concrete, practical experience, not along abstract, systematic lines. episteme-(‘true knowledge”-scientific, abstract knowledge epitomized by knowledge of the Ideas.

Note too that the tripartite scheme of the psuche also attempts to answer a problem posed by the split between mind and its objects (vide supra page 393). For, how else can things which are uniquely separate in any way, meet and interact, or, how can the mind assimilate that which is totally alien to it. Plato’s outlook places the ‘?,ruth”, i.e. the abstract, in the real world, outside of the self, but part of the mind operates so as to be able to approach these truths. Similarly, the appetitive part of mind is suited to apprehend the concrete and the sensory. Plato explicitly accounts for this scheme in the myths of the Timaeus: the creator-god thus arranged the nature of man in relation to the nature of the cosmos.

But still, what gives rise to this ability to apprehend the “forms,” the “ideas.” In some dialogues (e.g. The Republic, The Laws) , especially where questions of education arise, Plato speaks as if it were a natural developmental sequence, the progression from childhood to adult life. Another answer that Plato works with is that of innate knowledge, and the operation of recollection. The importance of recollection is presented in mythopoetic terms,-the psuche has had previous exist- ence, and previous contact with the form of the true, the good and the beautiful (e.g. Phaedrus 246 et. seq.).

Recollection, however, also serves as a kind of transforming factor,--an ex- amplar of how the mind does not simply passively register, but converts the “input” into something truly mental. In schematic terms, the mind has representations of the outer world which vary in nature from almost literal and pictorial representations to verbal, ideational and propositional representations (cf. Philebus 38C; Sophist 261ff. ; Theatetus 190). “h!Iemory” (recollection)-the recollection of previous higher forms of knowledge, i.e. the Ideas, is capable, under the proper circumstances of converting sensory representation, (doxa) the lowest form of mental life, to true knowledge (episteme). I n the Meno (97D, ff .). Plato compared thoughts (i.e. mental contents) to little mechanical wind-up men that can wander all over. Memory ties up these little mechanical statues so that they cannot run loose. Memory converts opinions into true knowledge by a process of binding or tying. (Cf. Theatetus 197ff.) We can see that the metaphor of the ((mobile” and “bound” (cathexes), terms used by Freud to characterize primary versus secondary process thinking, is found at least as early as Plato. What is central here, both in Plato and Freud, is the question of how to account for the inter-relations and transformations among the parts of the divided psuche.

In general the contrast and conflict running throughout the Platonic formulation of psuche is some variant of reason versus appetite. But he is often at pains to point out that the problem is not reason versus emotion. In the tripartite division in The Republic the spirited self-interested part can be an ally of either reason or appetite. The problem of education, for example, consists not only of cultivating the rational portion, but of somehow enlisting the aid and th? energies of the “spirited,” portion. Eros, an energy that is both specifically sexual and libidinous, yet also

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an energic ingredient of almost all human activity, from base to sublime, fills a theoretical position similar to the thumoeides, the spirited part. The philosopher is the lover of wisdom (Sophia-abstract, philosophical knowledge)-and it is relatively easy for Plato to define its characteristics. But what is the nature of the “love”--- how is the love of knowledge related to carnal love, to appetitive loves and lusts. In the dialogues, Phaedrus and the Symposium, Plato in effect says there are different forms of Eros (love)-appetitive love and lust being pale derivatives of that love which would motivate the search for the true, the good and the beautiful. The questions that are now subsumed under the topic of “sublimation” are thus given their first expression in these Platonic dialogues. For Plato, then, in some form or other, there must be a balance among the various parts of the psuche. The “wild animal” within us may undo us all, but without some sort of animal, or bodily force, the work of the rational part could not be accomplished.

I n the several schemes of the division of psuche i t is obvious that his language has become thoroughly anthropomorphic and sociomorphic. The process terms are not mathematical, for example. This is a crucial point, for recurrently in the history of psychology we find attempts to purge psychology of its anthropomorphisms. But recurrently we find that, when analyzing the operations of the mind for purposes of discussing moral issues, conflicts of wishes, and social controls, anthropomorphic language seem difficult to exclude. Perhaps this is particularly likely to be so when the basic “data” for the model comes from some variety or other of introspection. The Platonic scheme earlier in the Republic is in large part derived by an appeal to popular notions, available by introspection to most members of the culture. Even in Plato one can see evidence of his wish not be taken too literally-to get away from the absurdities in a phrase such as “master of oneself”-as if there were two people, a master and a slave. He speaks of his comparison of parts of the soul to different (contending) parts of the state, with a certain tentativeness, as not yet definitely proven, (e.g. Republic 434-435). Yet the language of persons within the person, or person-like agencies within the mind is difficult to avoid. In attempting to define the “inner self” Plato (as thinkers after him) had to resort to defining the inner person with reference to outer persons. (Cf. Grossman and Simon (11) for discussion of the “isomorphic” assumption).

(111) Greek culture from

Homer onwards had been greatly concerned with psychological distress. The Iliad-which Aristotle considered the most tragic of Greek tragedies-the Odyssey, and other forms of poetry and Athenian tragedy, over and over again represent every side of man in conflict. As was delineated in previous publications, these conflicts are not, however, presented as between “reason” and “appetite.” The stuff of which Greek poetry and tragedy is made are conflicts between one impulse and another, or between several conflicting sets of social imperatives. The conflicts are spelled out in the tale: the wrath of Achilles, the hubris of the suitors. The boundaries between inner conflict, and conflicts between the person and those around him are not sharply drawn. Furthermore, particularly in the Homeric epics, various extreme behaviors, including “madness” (mania) are attributed, as are all mental events, to an outside agency. Ate, sent by Zeus strikes a man and makes him act very foolishly. I n Sophocles’ tragedy, Athena drives Ajax mad,

Disturbances of Mind in Plato: What, for Plato, constitutes disturbances of the soul?


Greek tragedy, of course, contemporaneously with Socrates and Plato, frequently make madness its central theme, and laid out in dramatic and mythopoetic terms the intimate relationship-in fact, the continuum, between the hero torn by conflict and the hero finally gone mad, It is interesting to note, especially by way of contrast with Plato, that at the end of the Greek tragic tradition, in Euripides’ last play, the Bacchae, the madness of the protagonist is the result of attempted suppression and throttling of powerful instinctual forces that flourish in the individual, in the society, and in nature.

Thus, madness in the setting of unresolvable conflict was one major trend in the Greek traditions of Plato’s day. Also in the fifth century, one sees that the language and imagery of medicine-sickness, health, treatment-becomes increas- ingly prominent in relation to disturbed or bizarre behavior (cf. 16A, 30A, and 30B). One aspect of this usage (as seen in the poetic language of tragedy, for examp!e) is metaphor of sickness of the soul connoting inner corruption, moral decay. The medical terminology also heralds a naturalistic view of madness, particularly in the Hippocratic writings; mental and behavioral disturbances are afflictions of the brain, to be understood by the same principles (e.g. humoral imbalance) that explain all diseases. A more naturalistic view of madness was also implicit in Athenian law, which had to deal with issues such as the liability of a family for the behavior of an unrestrained, psychotic family member, or questions of mental competence in regard to making a will. Here, madness is not attended by moral and ethical implications, but is a natural condition.

Mania , “madness,” is a common colloquial Greek term, generally denoting frenzied or frenetic behavior, as well as disturbance of simple judgment and common sense. In fifth century Athens, one also saw that ambivalent mixture of fear, and religious awe of madness that is almost universal. Epilepsy was ‘(the sacred disease.” (Cf. Rosen, 24, pp. 71-136, for B good survey of these areas.)

Now, all of these trends form the background of Plato’s discussions of madness, and examples compatable with all of the above usages and contexts of madness can be readily adduced within the Dialogues. However, Plato effected a transformation of the notions of madness, of sickness of the soul, of treatment of that sickness, that went far beyond anything in the culture of his day. In brief, what is unique to Plato is that sanity becomes equated with the highest abstracting and rational activities, while madness becomes subtly identified with the bodily, the appetitive, and the associated forms of thinking. “Opinion,” “seeming”, “shadow,” “appetitive” and %ensory”-these are “madness” and their opposites define health and sanity. (See the table above, page 396.)

What is, then “sickness of the soul?” I n the Republic (444ff.) health of the soul is equivalent to justice.

To produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation of dominating and being dominated by one another, while to cause disease is to bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other contrary t o nature.

Justice in the soul, health in the soul, by analogy, is to establish the parts, . . . in natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other, contrary to nature. Similarly in the Sophist, (2273 ff.) sicknesses of the soul are equated with vice,

and vice with discord. “Cowardice, intemperance, and injustice . . . all alike are

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forms of disease in psuche.” These three vices are the opposites of three of the four Platonic virtues-courage, temperance, justice (and wisdom). Also, these vices are forms of “discord,” or conflict, (stasis, the Greek term for civil discord.)

The opposite of the fourth cardinal virtue, wisdom, is ignorance. In this passage in the Sophist, ignorance is related to sickness of the soul, though not precisely equivalent to it. In the Timaeus, (86ff .) ignorance is specifically labelled a disease of the psuche, and is related to madness: “We must acknowledge disease of the mind to be a want of intelligence; and of this there are two kinds-madness and ignorance.” There is a clear trend in Plato: he moves from the definition of sickness as discord, to sickness as ignorance. (18. p. 59)

A species of ignorance, the most pernicious kind, is ignorance of one’s self, and self-deception.

Xenophon summarized the Socratic position : (Memorabilia 111, IX, 6) (31) Madness (mania) he called the opposite of wisdom-though he certainly did not equate ignorance with madness. Nevertheless, he did think that not to know one’s self, and to imagine that one knows things that he knows he does not know, this is the nearest thing to out-and-out madness.

And, in an early dialogue (Hippias Minor 372-373) Socrates asks his colleagues to “heal my psuche,” for “you will do me much greater good by putting an end to ignorance of my psuche, than if you put an end to an affliction of my body.”

“Ignorance” and “knowledge” form a central polarity within Plato, and they undergo a change in emphasis over the course of the dialogues. The earlier (Socratic) emphasis is op “know thyself.” In the middle and later dialogues, knowledge of oneself is certainly not unimportant, but knowledge of the abstract, the rational, the universe of the Ideas becomes an ever more prominent ideal. Knowledge of these is the moral good. And “ignorance” then is equated with (or caused by) the tem- poral, the illusory, the bodily, and the sensual. Excess passion, overwhelming pride, the drive for power-these may interfere with acquiring “knowledge” and are in themselves kinds of madness. Excess pleasure, or excess pain, are specifically cited as the causes of ignorance or intemperance (e.g. Republic 4023-403).

The portrait of the despotic man (the tyrant) in the Republic is drawn with the aid of metaphors of incontinence, unbridled lust, and madness. (RepubEic 572-573).

Then at last this passion as leader of the soul, takes madness for the captain of its guard and breaks out in frenzy; if it can lay hold upon any thoughts or desires that are of good report and still capable of shame, it kills them or drives them forth, until it has purged the soul of all sobriety and called in the partisans of madness to fill the vacant places. . . . Then, when nature or habit or both have combined the traits of drunkenness lust and lunacy, then you have the perfect specimen of the despotic man.

Adjacent to this portrait of the tyrant, Plato, as if by free association to madness, details something further of the wishes of the wild and irrational parts of the psuche (571-572). Among these he includes the forbidden Oedipal wish. In dreams the rational part of the soul sleeps and lets down its guard.*

credits Plato with the idea of dreams expressing forbidden wishes. ‘Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams (pp. 67 and 620), probably referring to this passage,

MODELS OF MIND AND MENTAL ILLNESS IN ANCIENT GREECE 40 1

The beastly and savage part . . . endeavours to sally forth and satisfy its own natural instincts . . . there is nothing it will not venture to undertake as being released from all sense of shame and all reason. It does not shrink from attempting to have intercourse with one’s mother, or with any man, god, or animal. It is ready for any foul deed of blood . . . and falls short of no extreme of mindlessness and shamelessness. . . . there is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desires that is terrible, wild and lawless.

In this stream of Platonic thought, we find the equation implied that sanity equals the highest rational form of thinking and madness is anything less. Ideas are stable, unchanging, “being,” while all the rest is “becoming,” i.e. the universe of being born and perishing is one of flux, is unpredictable and characterized by great swings and variations.

This fear of excessive flux, too wide a range, too much variation, and (at the bottom) too much excitement, permeates Platonic thought. In more cosmological terms, as in the Timeaus, the contrast between regular, organized, periodic motions is intertwined with the contrast between psuche and soma, between Ideas and sensibles, i.e. irregular motion equals physical, moral, and cosmic disorder, (cf. especially Timaeus 43-44; also Laws 897C) “a motion that is crazy and irregular”).

Representations of this concern with wild flux versus order are seen in the discussions of music and drama (e.g. Republic, 111, throughout, especially 392-403). He speaks of musical modes and of dramatic presentations that are calm, have small gradations, and are more or less uniform. No violent emotions, or sudden caco- phonies are allowed. He condemns rhythms that are “appropriate to illiberality and insolence or madness or other evils” (Republic, 400B). Music must not be too li- centious or too provocative.

In contrast among Plato’s highest values are “harmony,” “symmetry” and “temperance” (sophrosune). This last term, “temperance” which also connotes “chastity,” or “sexual modesty,” is in fact, the common Platonic antithesis to madness (20). In this, Plato expands upon a fundamental Greek value, as expressed, for example, in the Delphic maxim “Nothing in excess.” Again, this concern with harmony and balance is the other side of the coin of Plato’s preoccupation with conflicts, particularly conflict (or dis-harmony) among the several parts of the psuche. By and large, in the chain of Platonic equivalences and metaphors, the rule and dominance of the rational is the most harmonious.

For Plato, justice too means a harmony and a balance. But his definitions of justice and injustice in the Republic go further. Justice in the state is everyone doing his own job, and one job; justice in the soul is each part performing one specific function. Injustice is equivalent to poluprogmosune-doing many things at the same time (Republic 433D; 434B, etc.)

It seems as if for Plato, the same individual making multiple, even if transient, identifications is equivalent to doing too many different things. This is still another side of Plato’s objection to tragedy-particularly if the tragedy would portray a sympathetic side of an evil character.

What is radical in all of this? It is abundantly clear that if one follows the Platonic conception of mental health and sickness, of sanity and madness, that most men are mad. The allegory of the cave-that we are prisoners who see only shadows

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-and the frequent references to men’s thinking as if they were asleep and dreaming (cf. Republic 534D) document this conclusion. The philosopher alone can claim to be healthy, balanced and rational and the number of men who can be philosophers is precariously small (cf. Republic 491B). Perhaps only Socrates, in fulfilling the dicta of “know thyself” and “nothing in excess” (except philosophy, of course!), in his search for the true eternal forms of the good and the beautiful, and his willing- ness to die in the belief that “the unexamined life is not worth living” was sane!

But what is Plato’s diagnosis of the source of evil, sickness and madness in man? In his mythic account of the creation man and the cosmos, the Timaeus, Plato betrays his profound disappointment. The demiurge, the craftsman who molded man, was limited in what he could accomplish. It is the emotions “terrible” and “irresistible” that constitute this limitation.

Those agencies that created man received . . . the immortal principle of the soul; and around this they proceeded to fashion a mortal body, and made it to be the vehicle of the soul, and constructed within the body a soul of another nature, which was mortal, subject to terrible and irresistible aff ections-first of all, pleasure, the greatest incitement of evil, then, pain, which deters from good; also rashness and fear, two foolish counsellors, anger hard to be appeased and hope easily led astray; these they mingled with irrational sense and with all-daring love according to necessary laws, and so framed man. (Timaeus

But Plato, in his Republic, was quite prepared to attempt some radical transformation of this basic human nature. His solution of how to modify and tame these destructive conflicts-abolish the family.

69C-D)

From Plato’s discussions of: a) the reforms in family life and marriage he proposes for the guardian dam-

intended to eliminate and reduce rivalries, jealousies, aggressive and illicit sexual impulses; the pernicious effects of drama, poetry, myths, and fairy tales---especially the effects on the young child; and his assumption of the power of mimesis, (a combination of imitation and identification) in molding character and influencing behavior,

on8 can read in Plato a rather subtle but perverse understanding of the role of the early family relations, via the medium of identifications, as the setting in which emotional and affective life develops. His attempts to purge and censor the gory nursery tales told to Greek children may strike US as somewhat naive. But, if we examine what Plato says ought to be eliminated, we can obtain a fairly complete inventory of what are in fact the forbidden wishes (and their accompanying terrors) of childhood-cannabalistic, patricidial, castrating, etc.

What Plato either is ignorant of (or decides to ignore) is, of course, the possi- bility that the telling of these tales may also serve various role-regulating, discharge, and perhaps “detoxifying” functions in child rearing. Instead, Plato focuses on the manifest contradictions involved in parents’ expecting obedience from their children, yet telling them stories about how Zeus castrated his father, and how the gods deceived and cheated each other. For Plato, all of this merely fosters conflict rather than harmony.

b)

c)

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Another feature of human life which, i t seems in Plato’s diagnosis of the nature of evil, imperfection, and madness, is the fact of sexual differences between men and Women and the relation between intercourse and birth. Certainly this difference represents for him conflict rather than harmony. I n the extended myth in the Statesm.an, one sees that sexual intercourse and propogation thereby are features of that part of the human cycle when the god is not at the helm, and motions are wild, erratic and impulsive. During the period when the god is in control and the motions lead to good and perfection, there is no birth following sexual intercourse. Rather men arise from the earth as old, and grow progressively younger.

In the Republic, Plato devises the “noble lie” which he claims is necessary to teach the community, especially the guardians; the guardians were not born of women, but from the earth, who is their common mother. I n other Platonic myths, the trend is to assign to the female the role of the source of evil and folly, or else to assume that the creation of woman is already a sign of decline and decay. (15, p. 14ff .)

However, we can carry the analysis a step further. If we review the list (p. 396) of the characteristics of the baser forms of knowing versus the higher forms of knowing (and their corresponding portions of the psuche) and now consider the last proposition-Plato’s denigration of sexual differences and of intercourse as a method of begetting and creating-a rather simple, but remarkable construction occurs.

Consider the items on the list: Shadow, illusion, uncontrolled flux and movement, wild rhythms, asleep and

dreaming, conflict, begetting and being born: i t now appears that there is an unconscious fantasy that organizes Plato’s notion of the baser ways of knowing and the baser objects of knowledge-namely, the younger child watching and exper- iencing parental intercourse, i.e. a primal scene fantasy. The fantasy would include the experience of the child watching, and the awareness, a t some level, that the scene has something to do with the begetting and birth of siblings. Thus, the core unconscious meaning for Plato of madness is the wild, unbridled, confused, combata- tive, perception of parental intercourse and its consequences. It is a frightening, but fascinating scene.

Bradley has argued that the myth of the origin of the sexes in the Symposium (cited by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle) represents a primal scene fantasy (2). Plato describes several composite creatures : man-man, woman-woman, and man-woman, with faces, heads, and genitals in various peculiar and dislocated positions. One can see many other images and themes in Plato that are also plausibly explained as expressions of a primal scene fantasy.* Reference to night terrors, t o bogey-men, and to sudden startling sounds are scattered throughout the dialogues. Most notable is the myth of the prisoners of the cave-chained and transfixed in semi-darkness, able only to watch shadows, and hearing echoes and thereby having only a most imperfect understanding of the real world, the world illuminated by the sun. (Republic VII)

Here too belongs Plato’s imaginary construction of the three parts of the psuche-the appetitive, the wild unbridled part, is a hydra-like monster, constantly changing, begetting new heads, which are fighting with one another. Another piece of Platonic “psychology” also now falls into place-the rejection of mimesis (identi-

*The connection between madness and peekin at forbidden sexual scenes is made more explicitly in Euripides’ Bacchae. Pentheus goes mad an8 i.. c destroyed as he is lured into and yields to the temptat.ion to observe the sexual revels of the female followers of Dionysius, including his mother.

404 BENNETT SIMON

fication-imitation) and the definition of injustice as polypragmosune, doing too many things at once. Consider Plato’s denunciation of the evils of tragedy: he singles out for particular emphasis the danger of men (either in the audience, or as actors) coming to imitate women (Republic 395 D-E) :

and being men, to ‘imitate’ (identify with) a woman, either old or young, or berating her husband, or cursing the gods and boasting loudly how fortunate she is, or a woman in misery, in grief and lamentation, and still less a woman, sick and dying, enthralled, or in love, or moaning in labor.

One of the features of primal scene fantasies as noted by analysts, is, of course, confusion of sexual identity. (Or, to phrase it somewhat differently, the primal scene fantasy may be the “carrier” of the various pre-genital, bi-sexual fantasies of the child.) In fact, mimesis itself is likened to a promiscuous woman, having intercourse with the loosest sorts of riff-raff and, of course, begetting only the worst sort of children (Republic 603B).

The anti-thesis of madness involves things which are clear-cut, unconfused, and can be watched with calm and repose. The version of primal scene fantasy finding expression in Plato is obviously not a pleasant one, but it is one that for most people has a tremendous fascination. The treatment of madness, then, involves getting people to turn away from these sights, and turn their eye to the light and to the clear vision. Men must learn to contemplate other sights than the confused and frightening shadows on the wall.

One cannot but be struck with the tremendous emphasis on vision in Plato, and how vision, of all the senses, is the closest analogy to the highest forms of knowledge, the knowledge of the ideas (e.g., Republic, 508ff.). (The Greek work for “ideas” connotes shapes, visual forms.) The relationship between the Platonic concern with vision and visual forms and his philosophical activity has been most clearly explained by Havelock, who has elaborated on the crucial role of the rise of literacy in fifth and fourth century Greece (12). The social psychological correlate of the emphasis on vision is the shift from education in the oral tradition to an education more and more based on book learning.

This notion must be further elaborated: the movement in Plato from the baser, and confused looking, which we infer is on the model of primal-scene looking, t o clear and sharp looking is a reflection of the psycho-social upheaval entailed with the beginning of widespread literacy in Plato’s day. Again, to be all too brief, literacy is both the fulcrum of change and upheaval, and, a t the same time, as is perhaps dimly perceived by Plato, the way out-the path of resolution of conflict between generations, sexes, and classes.

To look at the primal scene is to witness over and over again, the scene of violence, conflict, and confusion. It is the scene of the fight between the sexes, and the confusion between the sexes. It is the scene of the begetting of rivals and the begetting of rivalry. It is the stimulus to forbidden Oedipal wishes. New ways to look and new objects of vision must be found.

What for Plato are the ways of turning the soul from madness to sanity, from illusion to clear reality? I n short what is the Platonic prescription for the sickness of the soul?

(Section 2 will appear in the January 1973 issue.)

models of mind and mental illness in ancient greece: ii. the platonic model

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