Le Devenir de la Recherche Psychiatrique

Abstract

Ten years ago, Professor Cleghorn wrote a paper about the hazards and hindrances in psychiatric research. Are we now entitled to state that the situation has greatly improved? The future of psychiatric research can only parallel the development of psychiatry itself. As in any other specialty of medicine, teaching, clinical work and research are but three aspects of the same goal; one must not be overemphasized to the detriment of the other. Before Freud, psychiatry was mainly a description of clinical observations; after Freud the stress was put upon dynamic psychopathology, thus creating a gap between neurological sciences and psychiatry. Social psychiatry and institutional psychotherapy, two offspring of the psychoanalytic movement, are now becoming predominant. These new trends, made possible by psychopharmacology, call for multi-disciplinary teams of ‘human’ scientists. In so doing, the distance from classical medicine widens and one wonders if some day there will not be a complete separation. Although the separation is not desirable, if it ever happens, psychiatric research will become essential to preserve clinical traditions.