Phillipe Pinel was a French physician who was born in 1745. He is widely known as the father of scientific psychiatry. He was an advocate for treating mentally ill patients as they are and not as though they are possessed by demons, which was believed during that era. This concept is known as moral therapy. He worked around the time of the French Revolution and became the medical director of a large psychiatric hospital named Salpetrierre.
After observing the conditions of the patients and how they were treated, Pinel developed scientific practical techniques to treat the patients, rather than the usual concepts and assumptions. He engaged in therapeutic conversations to dissuade patients from delusions. He argued that psychological intervention must be tailored to each individual and must be based on that individual’s own perspective and history. Throughout his career he had a huge impact on the overall management of psychiatric institutions and expressed his humane views on how to treat the patients within the institutions by devoting the concept of order without violence.