was peculiar to Europe alone.

That is the reason psychiatry lagged so far behind in its evolution. But the scholars and the physicians were able to

master public opinion and gather the reins of these matters into their own hands, defying thereby all the social authorities — religious and political alike — for the sake of the rise of a new science, firm of pillars and fixed of foundations, submitting entirely to scientific methods and their laws and to rigorous ways of research. And for this they paid everything dear and precious, and paid it lavishly... They suffered persecution, and torture, and homelessness and exile, and poverty, and privation... And that for one reason only: they wanted to replace those false, fanciful views with realistic, scientific views, and they believed that "mental illnesses have no connection whatever with evil spirits or with devils"; and instead of studying how to expel these alleged spirits, they devoted themselves to the study of the effective means of treating those illnesses and curing them.

Psychiatry — which studies and treats all the abnormal states that afflict man's psyche and his mind and his individual and social conduct — is one of the modern branches of medicine. And we do not overstep the truth if we say that in its present form and in its current scientific state it is a very recent branch indeed, which saw the greatest and boldest strides of its evolution in this century — nay, in the years that followed the First World War. It is today one of the branches of knowledge that have done away, to a far-reaching degree, with superstitions and reckless fanciful notions, not in medicine alone, but in many other fields besides: in sociology, in psychology, in history and philosophy and elsewhere. And we do not exaggerate if we say that psychiatry — and the sciences of the psyche in general — is among the cultural weapons we employ in every field of life, be it political or social or industrial or educational... For it concerns itself with man insofar as he is a living human being: it studies people's thoughts and decides between the reasonable among them and the unreasonable; it analyzes their

emotions and feelings, to decide between the abnormal among them and the normal; and it devotes the greater part of its activity to the study of their conduct and behav-ior, separating the acceptable therein from the unacceptable...

The task of psychiatry is man's well-being in all its aspects, and his liberation from the bonds of superstition, of partiality, and of intellectual and doctrinal despo-tism. And a task carrying such a mission is a grave task, no doubt of that; and full readiness to under-

take it is among the necessities that demand special study, wide general reading, and a compre-hensive, steady effort... The aim behind all this is that we make of the individual whose mental and emotional rights have been lost among illusions and superstitions a human being free of psychological bonds, of their fears and their tyranny... regardless of whether he is mad, as they say, or not mad, sick or not sick... For, after all, these are all human beings...

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