Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

The recent article and buzz about the decreasing use of psychotherapy by psychiatrists (http://www.healthexperiment.com) is further evidence of a social shift away from relating to others as people. Our use of torture as a nation, the "axis of evil" language from our government, and the increasing psychiatric view of symptoms as reflections of neurons and chemicals suggests that we may be in a social withdrawal from being able to face and bear the pain of human experience. The Austen Riggs Center' s Eric Plakun speaks for the tension in psychiatry between two models of treatment: biological and psychological(http://wkim83.wordpress.com ) . He argues that they must be integrated for a full picture of our patients. Shifting away from the area that psychoanalysis has so carefully developed of listening to others with disciplined empathy runs the risk of losing the embedded set of values about the significance of the individual life.