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Classification, Disease and Evidence pp 43–61Cite as

What Will Psychiatry Become?

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Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 7))

Abstract

Modern psychiatry aims at uncovering the causal structure of mental illness. I discuss two issues relating to this. First, the allure of reductionism, which goes along with a metaphysical commitment to levels of explanation that gets in the way of more promising approaches to psychiatric explanation. Second, I discuss the place of psychology within psychiatry, suggesting that we may need to develop new psychological concepts to do justice to neuroscientific developments, but that this might rob psychiatry of the ability to help patients understand themselves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Dominic Murphy

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  1. Dominic Murphy
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Correspondence to Dominic Murphy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IHPST, CNRS/Université Paris I/ENS, Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

  2. Centre Cavaillès, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France

    Gérard Lambert

  3. Éditions Matériologiques, Paris, France

    Marc Silberstein

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Murphy, D. (2015). What Will Psychiatry Become?. In: Huneman, P., Lambert, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Classification, Disease and Evidence. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8887-8_3

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