The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, “Clueless”:
“In the past, psychiatrists were physicians who dealt with the patient’s psychic as well as somatic functions. Today, psychiatrists solely deal with the patient symptomatically by prescribing medication. For them, the patient’s psyche is not in their medical province.
According to current psychiatric thinking, the source of the patient’s mental illness, as defined by the DSM system, is the result of localized pathology in the brain. This is mechanistic thinking and a throwback to the 19th century when it was commonly believed that each part of the brain was a center for designated psychic faculties such as reasoning, empathy etc. The psyche was equated with the human brain.
This return to an antiquated view of the psyche came about in three stages. First, Freud’s psychologically based ideas on sexuality (libido theory) had to be repudiated by mainstream psychiatry. Then, the source of psychiatric illness could be replaced by the idea of brain localization. Finally, it could follow mystically that drugs could somehow be “tailor made” to target the brain for every psychiatric disorder.”
Charles Konia, M.D. 