Plato's Timaeus on the sickness of the soul and the methods of its treatment

This paper is the result of research into the phenomenon of madness and attitudes towards mental health in the culture of ancient Greece. I present the analysis of one of Plato's dialogues as the work of a philosopher very much interested in the relationship between the body and the soul. Timaeus is a unique dialogue, in which we find a discussion on a relationship between a healthy and ill person, while consideration is also given to all the necessary circumstances that accompany the tension between the two conditions. Reading Timaeus we find that mental health issues were an essential element of the discourse held by intellectuals of the classical period. Plato differentiates between a mad action from the point of view of medicine and a morally evil action. Mania is considered here to be the effect of a deterioration of the soul, regardless of whether it is medical or moral in nature; it is a state of imbalance that causes madness, inner and social decay, eventually leading to a breakdown.