Psychiatry is the medical specialty dealing with
disorders, disturbances and diseases of the mind
and central nervous system. Psychiatrists are
physicians(M.D.s) who have chosen to specialize in
their field by an average of three additional
years of study after graduation from medical
school.
Psychiatry in America has undergone a
tremendous transformation in the past
half century from a predominantly verbal,
psychological approach to serious mental illness,
to a predominantly biological, physical approach
to such difficulties by means of medications.
Freud has been replaced by Prozac. But today there
are as many combinations and variations on
therapeutic approaches to the classic mind-body
dilemma as there are psychiatrists, with each
practitioner struggling, not always successfully,
to discover and maintain a balance with which they
are comfortable.
Psychodynamic psychiatry is the
general term for an approach to understanding
human beings that relies heavily upon the insights
of Freud and other pioneers in so-called depth
psychology and the mapping of the unconscious
mind. This is the "talking cure" that favors the
growth of personal insight and the modification of
unhealthy personality traits and complexes, the
latter often but not invariably deriving from
earlier life experiences.
Biological psychiatry or psychopharmacology
describes an approach to traditional psychiatric
problems that emphasizes the role of the brain in
the production of symptoms and the utility of
medications and other physical methods in
alleviating them. Biological psychiatry, thanks to
the discovery and deployment of effective
psychiatric medications in the past half century,
is currently the dominant point of view in the
field, just as psychodynamic psychiatry was before
the introduction of potent medications.
Neither of these approaches precludes the other,
and common sense as well as abundant clinical and
scientific experience suggests that the best
results will usually be obtained by a judicious
combination of both methods, the specific balance
to vary according to the particular needs of
individual patients.
Most effective psychiatrists today can be
reasonably described as eclectic and pragmatic,
that is, combining a variety of approaches and
treatments tailored to the specific individual and
aimed at providing relief of symptoms and general
improvement of mental functioning. One-sidedness
in psychiatry -too much reliance on either
medication or psychotherapy to the exclusion of
the other- is seldom productive.
Weblog:
The Psychiatrist
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