The concepts of psychiatry : a pluralistic approach to the mind and mental illness / S. Nassir Ghaemi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ghaemi, S. Nassir.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychiatry.

Psychiatry--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (366 p.)

Edition:

John Hopkins pbks. ed.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Because most psychiatric illnesses are complex phenomena, no single method or approach is sufficient to explain them or the experiences of persons who have them. Yet in place of past dogmatisms, contemporary psychiatry has moved toward an "anything goes" eclecticism, resulting in much confusion. In The Concepts of Psychiatry, Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi argues that the discipline of psychiatry can be understood best from a pluralistic perspective that goes beyond both dogmatism and eclecticism. Grounding his approach in the works of Karl Jaspers, Paul McHugh, Phillip Slavney, Leston Havens, and others, Ghaemi presents a philosophical discussion of the strengths of a pluralistic model and the weaknesses of other approaches, such as biological or psychoanalytic theories and biopsychiosocial eclecticism. He also re-examines the nature of scientific method as applied to psychiatry and seeks to shed conceptual light on our current approach to psychiatric diagnosis. The paperback edition includes a new preface by the author.

Contents:

The status quo: dogmatism, the biopsychosocial model, and alternatives

What there is: of mind and brain

How we know: understanding the mind

What is scientific method?

Reading Karl Jaspers's General psychopathology

What is scientific method in psychiatry?

Darwin's dangerous method: the essentialist fallacy

What we value: the ethics of psychiatry

Desire and self: Hellenistic and Eastern approaches

On the nature of mental illness: disease or myth?

Order out of chaos: the evolution of psychiatric nosology

A theory of DSM-IV: ideal types

Dimensions versus categories

The perils of belief: psychosis

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: depression

Life's rollercoaster: mania

Being self-aware: insight

Psychopharmacology: Calvinism or hedonism?

Truth and statistics: problems of empirical psychiatry

A climate of opinion: what remains of psychoanalysis

Being there: existential psychotherapy

Beyond eclecticism: integrating psychotherapy and psychopharmacology

Bridging the biology-psychology dichotomy: the hopes of integrationism

Why it is hard to be pluralist.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [321]-329) and index.

ISBN:

0-8018-8137-4

OCLC:

794701451