New trends in the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychiatry

Abstract

Psychoanalysis in psychiatry was then the avant-garde of clinical and theoretical practices in mental health, leading to important progresses in the diffusion and use of institutional treatments (milieu therapy, ‘institutional psychotherapy’), psychotherapies for psychiatric patients and the emergence of community carers, at least in the better resourced countries. [...]in the past decade we have been witnessing a new era in this regard and we are at the crossroads of two promising converging evolutions: (a) From the neuroscience perspective: the development of the capacity to be less reductionist and to integrate in its scope finer-grained natural, relational or psychological aspects (i.e. empathy, emotions, subjectivity and intersubjectivity) (Berthoz, 2014), allowing for the consideration of more complex person-centred dimensions (Mezzich et al, 2010). (b) From the psychoanalysis perspective: the development of the capacity to face and address the three main criticisms that are still diminishing its impact in psychiatry: (i) doubts about the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapies; (ii) doubts about the applicability of psychoanalytic approaches to major psychiatric conditions because of the nature of their psychopathology; (iii) doubts about the validity of psychoanalytic, psychopathological assumptions in scientific terms. [...]I will describe the situation in France, where psychoanalysis has long been very influential in psychiatry and other fields and where, despite the current tensions, psychoanalysis continues to be one of the elements taken into account when considering the validity of research and when thinking about issues of social significance, including psychiatry.