Tumult in Therapyland

Extract

There is no profession where social change receives more approbation and less application than psychiatry. It is considered salubrious for patients and clinicians alike. This zeal for the innovative has produced an amazing proliferation of therapies. Beyond this psychiatry even preempts a trailblazing role among the behavioral sciences for its evolutionary approach. Freud's social side has been resurrected and now it is acknowledged that the founding father devoted considerable attention to the social aspects of psychoanalysis. That this tendency is alive and prospering is inferred from the emergence of psychohistory, which may even replace community psychiatry—whose lustre has faded —as an example. However, before the profession is crowned with laurel, it might be well to determine whether this appraisal is apparent or real. A more critical analysis seems to indicate that psychiatry has incorporated social influences—up to a point. At first the social component was given consideration.