Somatic school may refer to those in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who argued for a biological (as opposed to psychological)

etiology Etiology (pronounced ; alternatively: aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek (''aitiología'') "giving a reason for" (, ''aitía'', "cause"); and ('' -logía''). More completely, e ...

of insanity; or it may refer to a group of nineteenth-century German psychiatrists, including Carl Jacobi,

Christian Friedrich Nasse Christian Friedrich Nasse (18 April 1778 – 18 April 1851) was a German physician and psychiatrist born in Bielefeld. He studied medicine at the University of Halle under physiologist Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813). At Halle, Achim von Arni ...

and

Carl Friedrich Flemming Carl Friedrich Flemming (27 December 1799 – 27 January 1880) was a German psychiatrist born in Jüterbog. He was the father of cellular biologist Walther Flemming (1843-1905). After receiving his medical doctorate from Berlin, he worked as an ...

, who taught that insanity is a symptom of biological diseases ''located outside the brain'', particularly diseases of the abdominal and thoracic viscera (akin to the delirium caused by many acute biological illnesses). This latter German school opposed the "physiological school" represented in Germany by Wilhelm Roser,

Wilhelm Griesinger Wilhelm Griesinger (29 July 1817 – 26 October 1868) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Stuttgart. Life and career He studied under Johann Lukas Schönlein at the University of Zurich and physiologist François Magendie in ...

and Carl Wunderlich, who insisted on there being a brain

lesion A lesion is any damage or abnormal change in the tissue of an organism, usually caused by disease or trauma. ''Lesion'' is derived from the Latin "injury". Lesions may occur in plants as well as animals. Types There is no designated classif ...

underlying every case of insanity, even if in some instances that lesion is the product of a pre-existing, extra-cerebral biological illness and the psychical school of Johann Heinroth and others, who asserted that all insanity is the product of moral or psychological weakness and rejected any notion of a physical pathological cause.

References

{{Psychiatry History of psychiatry Psychological schools