So what can be Learned?

Abstract

The overview of contemporary psychiatry’s tasks and tools in the body of this book can be thought of as a summary of findings from a 50-year experiment. Beginning in the 1960s, psychiatry set out, consciously or otherwise, to develop and present itself as a medical specialty equivalent to any other in logical framework, status and a commitment to science. During the first half of the twentieth century psychiatry had backed two horses. One was the care of and amelioration of suffering amongst those incarcerated in large numbers in overcrowded asylums. The other was the interpretation and resolution of psychological conflicts considered to be the source of difficulties and distress. Beginning in the 1950s pressures to run down the asylum system, promises of chemical cures and embarrassment at not being able to join the rest of medicine’s embrace of science all conspired to fuel change. This resulted in a reliable scheme for classifying mental health difficulties, investment in scientifically inspired approaches to studying them and the presentation of psychiatry to its public as a professional enterprise ‘doing’ scientific medicine just like its peers in cardiology or neurology. A chorus of critical voices suggests that this has not met with sucess or with universal approval, and the main purpose of this book has been to gather findings from the experiment and distil what can be learned from them.