Hidden philosophy and theology in Morel's theory of degeneration and nosology

Abstract

Although philosophy and theology on the one hand and psychiatry on the other have become separate disciplines, they continue to function as 'parallel discourses'. This is apparent in the work of Morel, whose theory of degeneration was based on a belief in creation and the existence of a moral law. He was influenced by Buffon's naturalism, whose tenets were opposed to Darwin's recently published theory of evolution. Morel's nosological concept of pathology grew from his beliefs about the relation between the body and the soul, and the role of free will and passion. He borrowed from Gall's account of phrenology to refute accusations of materialism and determinism, but he also drew on the doctrines of Thomism to explain the relation between the body and the soul. He was acquainted with the work of Buchez and Morin, whose writings were an early and almost unknown source of Thomistic revival in the mid-nineteenth century.