New Perspectives in Psychiatry: Relevance of the Psychopathological Animal Model to the Human

Abstract

Biological and social behaviorists have been attempting to bridge the gap between natural and social sciences to achieve a better understanding of human behavior. It is refreshing to see the return of psychology to the natural sciences, based on a re-evaluation of basic concepts in man’s behavior in relation to that of the animal, which will result in a more scientific orientation of the behavioral sciences. Unfortunately, psychiatry has placed itself in a pseudoscientific position as a result of its confusing and ambiguous theoretical tenets. Indeed, psychiatrists are a special breed of healers prepared by a medical model for a neuro-physiological understanding of man, while they are faced, in the process of healing, with a complex psychosocial reality of man interacting with this environment. Most clinical schools of thought that attempted to create a psychological model of man based on introspection concluded with highly speculative theories, scientifically impossible to test. Conversely, experimental researchers, working in laboratories with animal models, attempt to make qualifications on a human system of behavior based on mechanical concepts totally unsuited to man’s psychosocial existence.