> If you want an explanation for the rise of
> biological psychiatry, the first place to look is at
> the profits of the drug companies and the need for
> psychiatrists to maintain their own status! Then look at
> the politics of the alternatives. I think that is more
> likely to yield a persuasive account than any
> Heideggerian 'formula'.
Maybe so, but it shouldn't be forgotten that the emergence
of biological psychiatry comes in the wake of the gradual
waning of the psychodynamic paradigm, no bad thing in my
opinion, to a kind of neo-Kraepelinism;i.e. a return to
Kraepelin (creator of the prototype for schizophrenia),
where all concerns about cause are screened out only to
resurface in "Western" psychiatric classification systems
through the back door as individualised biomedical
explanations. Don't forget too that almost all psychiatric
drugs were discovered by accident, and that the cure is
often worse than the "illness".
k.siddall@xxxxxxxxxxx