Even though this view is nonsense, I'm sure many psychiatrists are sympathetic to it. This situation shows how much psychiatry is still trapped in the history of conflict between Cartesianism and vitalism (see eg. previous post). Rather than go along with the stark binary opposition of Fountoulakis between reductionism and believing in a "creator with an intelligent plan", I think it makes more sense to concede that the relation between mind and matter is an enigma that can never be solved (see eg. previous post). Intentionality and directedness is part of the nature of life, not something external to life. Neuronal processes are not meaning making and lack intentionality, so can only mediate intentional acts as part of an overall life process (see eg. previous post). It is absurd to expect to be able to explain life in terms of merely mechanical principles of nature (see eg. another previous post). This situation doesn't justify belief in a supernatural external force. Even Stahl's vitalism did not posit a transcendent soul. Stahl’s anima was an immaterial ordering principle of movement within physiology. Of course I'm not defending vitalism; merely indicating the bizarre way in which Fountoulakis polarises the debate about reductionism. Anti-reductionism can still be a valid explanation without ontological implications (see another previous post). Fontoulakis should accept that our relationship to ourselves is irreducibly ambiguous (see eg. previous post).
Fountoulakis reinforces his argument for minimising the role of the environment in mental disorders by pointing to "the universality of mental disorder manifestations, with only a few culturally bound syndromes of questionable validity". Actually, it is important to recognise the extent to which psychiatric diagnosis is a cultural judgement (see previous post). Fountoulakis questions the WHO cross-national research which is commonly seen as having found a better outcome for schizophrenia in developing countries in comparison with developed ones. Nonetheless, it is important not to minimise the considerable differences in the presentation of psychosis in different countries.
Fountoulakis says without reference: "Beyond doubt, there is a minority of patients which under strict double-blind placebo-controlled conditions respond absolutely perfectly to medication treatment". He goes on to conclude, "For these patients, there is no doubt that their mental illness can be completely reduced to neurobiological dysfunction." I'm presuming his degree of certainty comes from his own experience, but we do need to see some evidence. I think the lack of references for these claims is telling. Fountoulakis makes clear that if a position like this is not generalisable that his fear is again that it introduces "some kind of supernatural process" into the origins of mental disorder. He actually thinks psychiatrists are "too much psychosocially rather than biomedically inclined". He blames what he calls “'violent' deinstitutionalization since the 1960s" for the current deterioration in the condition of mental health patients who are being deprived of their rights to biomedical treatment. His defence of the biomedical model seems rather desperate.
Of course, there are organic brain effects, but, despite what Fountoulakis implies, there are also functional mental disorders without biological abnormality (see eg. previous post). He does not seem to accept what he calls a “modified bio-psychosocial model” that sees mental illness as having a “basic neurobiological etiopathogenesis ... shaped by psychological, social, and cultural factors”. I too have difficulties with such an eclectic approach (see last post) but Fountoulakis seems to prefer a radical reductionistic point of view. The brain of course mediates mental illness, but although people may find it difficult to accept the lack of any neurobiological determination of functional mental disorder, such a view is not as “off the wall” as Fountoulakis makes out.
No comments:
Post a Comment