Abstract

This is a chapter on the history of ideas related to recovery. Moral treatment was a novel approach to caring for mentally ill patients that arose towards the end of the eighteenth century in Europe, and then spread to North America. It is most famously associated with the names of William Tuke in York, and Philippe Pinel in Paris. These two very different men—Tuke was a wealthy English Quaker businessman and philanthropist, and Pinel was a famous French medical author and doctor—formulated two quite different approaches to the care of the mentally ill. Yet there are also important similarities in their approaches. The concept of “recovery” plays a fundamental role in both Tuke's and Pinel's conceptions of the care and treatment of mental illness. It is interesting, and important, to consider the underlying premises of their respective clinical approaches as we consider the nature and origins of the concept of “recovery” today.