1 The idea that mental illness was in fact a way toward wisdom could still be found in medieval Christian visionaries. Many believed that madness revealed hidden intuitive and mystical knowledge. Some Greeks, including Plato, viewed mental illness as a kind of spiritual gift, a portal into new ways of seeing. Madness, as it was called, was believed to be supernatural, not natural. For much of human history, people with mental illness were thought to be possessed by gods or devils.
