Main description:

The field of academic psychiatry is in crisis, everywhere. It is not merely a health crisis of resource scarcity or distribution, competing claims and practice models, or level of development from one country to another, but a deeper, more fundamental crisis about the very definition and the theoretical basis of psychiatry. The kinds of questions that represent this crisis include whether psychiatry is a social science (like psychology or anthropology), whether it is better understood as part of the humanities (like philosophy, history, and literature), or if the future of psychiatry is best assured as a branch of medicine (based on genetics and neuroscience)? In fact, the question often debated since the beginning of modern psychiatry concerns the biomedical model so that part of psychiatry's perpetual self-questioning is to what extent it is or is not a branch of medicine. This unique and bold volume offers a representative and critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry with deeply informed transdisciplinary readings of the literature and practices of the field by two professors of psychiatry who are active in practice and engaged in research and have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy. In alternating chapters presenting contrasting arguments for the future of psychiatry, the two authors conclude with a dialogue between them to flesh out the theoretical, research, and practical implications of psychiatry's current crisis, outlining areas of divergence, consensus, and fruitful collaborations to revision psychiatry today. The volume is scrupulously documented but written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research, and practice for the student and practitioner alike in the social and human sciences and in medicine, psychiatry, and the neurosciences.

Contents:

1) IntroductionPart I Psychiatry in Crisis As a Medical Discipline - DS Stoyanov2) Methods for Clinical Evaluation in Psychiatry: Quantitative vs. Qualitative Approaches3) Psychiatric Nosology Revisited: At the Crossroads of Psychology and Medicine4) Psychiatry and Neuroscience: At the InterfacePart II Psychiatry in Crisis as a Human and Social Science5) The Beginning of the End of Psychiatry: A Philosophical Archaeology6) The End of Phenomenology7) The End of PsychiatryPart III Renewal in Psychiatry8) Cleaning the House of Psychiatry9) Reframing Psychiatry: Posing The Right Questions10) Renewal in Psychiatry