The Biopsychological Approach in Psychiatry: The Meyerian Legacy

Abstract

When giving notice of a memorial service for the eminent psychiatrist Theodore Lidz, the Yale Bulletin and Calendar (2001) observed that Lidz had expressed regret in his last years that he did not write just one more book to show that biology-based lines of research and training in current psychiatry are ‘barking up the wrong tree’. Lidz was professor and chief of clinical services in psychiatry at Yale, having taken his residency in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Adolf Meyer. There is no question about his distinguished standing within mainstream psychiatry. Although he was critical of the biomedical model of mental illness, this did not mean that his views were labelled and dismissed as ‘anti-psychiatry’.