Primary mental illness should not be looked for in the brain

People often understand that something has gone wrong in their brain when they receive a psychiatric diagnosis. For example, people have been told that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting the prefrontal cortex of the brain (see previous post). Neurodiversity in general is commonly seen as having a neurological basis (see another previous post). Similarly, schizophrenia has been said to originate from disruption of brain development, despite the need for caution about drawing any conclusions from the evidence about biological abnormalities in schizophrenia (see yet another previous post). We continue to believe that brain functions must be localised in the brain in some way.

Phrenology was the first doctrine to suggest that cortical functions could be localised in the brain (see previous post). Skull features, the bumps of which could be felt on the scalp, were said to be indicators of specific faculties of mind in the underlying brain. This was eventually recognised as nonsense. Nonetheless, people continue to believe that brain functions must be localised in the brain. 

But subjective experience cannot be naturalised as physical processes. It doesn’t make sense to do so. Mental states have a meaning which the brain as an object lacks (see previous post). As far as mental disorder is concerned, not all of it is due to brain disease (see another previous post). It is people that are conscious, not their brains (see yet another previous post). Mental illness shows through the brain, but not necessarily in it. Reduction of functional mental mental illness to brain disease is just not possible in principle. The brain isn’t alive; it is people that are. The mystery of the nature of the relationship of consciousness to physical events in the brain has not been solved and never will be. This is what psychiatry, and people in general, find difficult to accept.