Mind, body, and psychoanalysis: The science of psychotherapy.

Abstract

Along with the contributions of the psychoanalytic century to the science of the mind, there appears to be a diminished interest in and training for psychotherapy in favor of genetic, organic, and psychopharmacologic approaches. New advances should not be accompanied by the elimination of achieved ones. R. Waelder (1967) stated that progress has victims as well as beneficiaries. Psychopathology consists of complex psychological mechanisms and developmental factors, which, although they can now be demonstrated by cerebral radiography, must still be recognized as the center of therapeutic efforts. The opportunity is greater than ever to achieve an integration of our combined knowledge of brain and mind.Medicine never took easily or gracefully to problems of the mind. From the classic Greco-Roman period, through a tortuous history during the centuries that followed, attitudes toward and understanding of the vicissitudes of mind trailed behind the steady advances in the science of the body. For the better part of a millennium and a half, mental problems were