Abstract
This article, from conceptual and methodological nature, aims presenting the initial principles about the study of mental illness from the Historical-Cultural Psychology. In particular, it will present the Experimental Abnormal Psychology, elaborated by the Lithuanian psychologist Bluma V. Zeigarnik, which is a field of knowledge mostly unknown in Brazil. This psychological discipline, whose methodological base relies on the historical and dialectical materialism, is situated between psychology and psychiatry, and has been developed particularly in the Soviet Union. The Experimental Abnormal Psychology discusses about mental disorders, like changes in mental activity, considering its historical character and depends on the social relations. The personality is taken as an object of primary research, in view of its intrinsic relationship with the activity of the man and the social conditions in which they develop and also gets sick. The study aims to systematize the possibilities of action in the mental health field, from that theoretical perspective, overcoming the biological and medicals principles.
Keywords:
cultural-historical psychology; mental health; mental suffering