Psychiatry vs. Psychology...
Disease Narrative, Biological Causes, Medical Model and DSM, Psychiatric
point of view
vs. Psychological point of view...
But what is the psychological point of view?
But what is the role of the psychologist?
"So, if psychology is to be of any use, we have to build its place in
society- as well as within our minds" (Esteban Laso)
I agree but which place?
Can we agree in a share construct to answer this questions?
Anyway, all this discussion made me reflect in some of my point of views...
In this discussion forum we are talking about of all the above... In
general, I agree with what was said.
If we think that as psychotherapists we can give a "special" contribution
to help people dealing with their difficulties, we have to define which
contribution is it? and In which ways differ from others already
accepted... In other words, we have to define a work territory and a
language to go with it.
However this raise me a question,
If I consider a monist point a view as a better construct to understand the
human being, I see him/her as a holistic entity... so, I have to considered
that, as Laing argues in 1960, words such as psyche and soma, psychological
and physical are abstract terms, they are constructs that artificially
substantialized aspects of the human being. We can not expect that by
adding them together (psycho-somatic, psycho-social and so on) we have the
picture of the hole. So, in a monist perspective, we cannot see the
different human sciences as studying different substances or essences... in
a monist point of view, these sciences study different experiential
gestalts of the person. Therefore, a psychological view/construct of the
human being is different from a biological one. However, the psychology
doesn't deny the existence of the biology nor create a opposition to it. We
can try to understand a given phenomena by describing its psychological
gestalt or instead by describing its biological or social gestalt. In this
way we arrive to completely different description of the same picture....
You can be asking yourselves, all this bla, bla, bla, for what???
If we accept this monistic construction, the dichotomy between
Psychotherapy Vs. Psychiatry doesn't have to much sense...
However, the reflections about the need to define the psychological point
of view, the role of the psychologist and the place of the psychology, can
be seen under a different light... It's not a question of opposition to the
stabilised perspectives. In that way, we are only empowering them. It is a
question of gestalt, to define our own gestalt, ours constructs and what is
our special contribution to the sciences that say to study the human
being...
Regards,
Ana Almeida
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