What Will Psychiatry Become?

Abstract

Modern psychiatry aims at uncovering the causal structure of mental illness. I discuss two issues relating to this. First, the allure of reductionism, which goes along with a metaphysical commitment to levels of explanation that gets in the way of more promising approaches to psychiatric explanation. Second, I discuss the place of psychology within psychiatry, suggesting that we may need to develop new psychological concepts to do justice to neuroscientific developments, but that this might rob psychiatry of the ability to help patients understand themselves.