Can Psychiatry Reclaim its Soul? Psychiatry's Struggle Against a Dispirited Future

Abstract

Objectives: To examine reasons why ‘religion’ and ‘psychiatry’, as systems of belief, have a fraught, mistrustful relationship based on conflict regarding the source of knowledge. The former insists that revelation, not rational empirical evidence, the latter's claim for superiority, is the ultimate source that illuminates the soul, not just the self. This tension is illustrated with the case of ‘facilitated communication’, a method that purportedly improves communication for children with pervasive developmental disorder. The controversy highlights an aspect of the differences between ‘scientific’ and ‘religious’ discourse and offers a further dimension to contemporary psychiatry's crisis: the three-way tension between the brain-less, mind-less and soul-less psychiatry. Conclusion: The suggestion for a possible remedy is to revisit the source of discontent, the Aristotelian doctrine that challenged the ancient wisdom of the immortality of the soul.