DOSSIER: EL NACIMIENTO DE LA PSIQUIATRÍA: UN MOVIMIENTO EUROPEO / THE BIRTH OF PSYCHIATRY: A EUROPEAN MOVEMENT

Alexander Crichton was born in Edinburgh in 1763; he graduated from Leyden University and travelled through Berlin, Paris, Stuttgart, Prague and Gotinga to perfect his knowledge in medicine while he establish a deep connection between the social media and the culture of those places. On 1798 he published An inquiry into the nature and origin of Mental Derangement, the only book he wrote dedicated to madness. In this paper we review some questions referred to the general method that the author applies, his contributions to the semiotics of the mind and to the analysis of the process of aging and the function of the attention; we also take a look to his conception of the world of passions and of madness, who influenced Philippe Pinel and Dominique Esquirol and also constitute a cornerstone in the birth of psychiatry.