[The attractive but illusory autonomy of a one-sided explanatory model for the psychopathology].
Nowadays psychiatry is dominated by the scientific perspective of biological psychiatry according to which a psychiatrist should be first and foremost a brain specialist with a biomedical approach to patients and their problems. This constitutes a threat to the fundamental notion that a psychiatrist is concerned primarily with the workings of the mind and it reduces the discipline to a form of behavioural neurology. This restrictive interpretation fails to do justice to the theory that psychopathology has a multitude of causes. This article provides an overview of the methodological, socio-cultural and metaphysical causes and effects of this one-sided development. The overview is followed by a plea for a pluralistic rather than a deterministic view of psychiatry, which is an extraordinary type of medical discipline.
Dirkx
J
J
Nederlands Psychoanalytisch Instituut, Maliestraat 1A, 3581 SH Utrecht. dirkx@npsai.nl
D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000473:pathology / Q000523:psychology; D010684:Philosophy; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000639:trends*; D011603:Psychophysiology