Normallity and Pathology in the psychological-medical debate of the 19th century

For a long time, concepts like normality, health and pathology have been exclusive interest of medicine; only recently, psychiatry also focused on them. While medicine have had parametric values and tools to analyze health-pathology issues, psychiatry needs to analyze variables which are difficult to assess and to compare. An analysis over concepts like normal and pathologic emphasizes the role of “the space”, “the topos”, “the borderline” between them. In that "space" or "borderline", there could be a quantitative continuum between normality and pathology, instead of a qualitative one; or alternatively, there could be a deep breakdown, which could produce practical and epistemological controversies. The historical research about this conceptual and methodological problems focuses on the work of some psychologists and psychiatrists – like W. James, A. Meyer, C.W. Beers, G.C. Ferrari – who worked in this field during the 19° century. The common peculiarity between this authors is their interest about this “borderline”, of which they analyzed ambiguities and strengths.