PSYKIATRIENS FORHOLD TIL PSYKE OG SOMA

Abstract

After a general introduction of the perception of psyche and soma in Danish psychiatry, these aspects are compared to those in American psychiatry. In USA and Denmark, the »Year of the Brain« has clearly disclosed the reductionism in the psychiatric perception of the psyche, – as illustrated by changing the term »psychic disease« to »brain disease«, without any evidence. It is futher argued that the phenomenological- hermeneutical tradition in the Danish psychiatry has impeded the development of a psychic pathogenesis and etiology of psychic diseases, – in contrast to USA. In Danish textbooks on psychiatry, psychology is only considered as a system of description and as techniques of therapy. In contrast to the reductionistic view, an emergent model of psychic phenomena is applied to the psychiatric reality. In draft, with a specific psychiatric disease as an example, emperical data are considered in relation to a reductionistic and an emergent perspective, of the relation between psyche and soma.