1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910806283003321

Autore

Ghaemi S. Nassir

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Baltimore, : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003

ISBN

0-8018-8137-4

Edizione

[John Hopkins pbks. ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (366 p.)

Disciplina

616.89

Soggetti

Psychiatry

Psychiatry - Philosophy

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

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

Nota di contenuto

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.

Sommario/riassunto

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.