The brain mythology of psychiatry

I’ve commonly mentioned Theodor Meynert (1833-92), a psychiatrist who thought he had delineated various ‘fibre-systems’ in the brain from his anatomical dissections; also deducing functions for these pathways (see eg. my editorial and previous post). The problem is that his findings were mere wishful thinking and they were eventually attacked and labelled as ‘brain mythology’.

Appreciating that primary mental illness is not localised in particular parts of the brain, by accepting that trying to do so is brain mythology, led to the distinction between organic and functional mental illness. Functional does not mean non-organic, in the sense that mental illness is not mediated by the brain. What it implies is that the brain functions more as a whole in such primary mental illness. People should not be reduced to their brain which is only part of them.

The distinction between functional and organic mental illness was wrongly abolished by DSM-IV (see eg. previous post). Psychiatry continues with its wishful thinking that abnormalities will be found in primary mental illness with its acclaimed findings from brain scans. However, these inconsistent results fail to be replicated, so that no biological markers have been found, which even mainstream psychiatry admits. It continues though with its brain mythology that more research will eventually find underlying biological abnormalities. It’s about time such wishful brain mythology is acknowledged in the modern age.