New York Wonderland

Historical Document 4

This document lays out the influences of Paul Möbius on the progression of psychosis and the way the world understands it. He believed that psychosis covered the spectrum of hysteria melancholy mania and paranoia, and in this text is described as the reason for the breakthrough of the understanding of hysteria as a psychogenic condition rather than a condition of the nervous system. He also is credited, in this document, as the first to establish private institutions for work therapy. These ideas and implements are pivotal in the worlds understanding of psychosis because it helps us understand the shift from problems stemming just physical issues of the nervous system to the problem actually being from the brain.