From the Editor
Psychiatry’s future shock
“I recall reading Future Shock during medical school. This seminal book jarred and inspired me with its predictions of how rapid change will be...
In the February 2014 issue (Psychiatry’s future shock, Current Psychiatry, February 2014, p. 19-20, 32 [http://bit.ly/1bvrp3t]) Dr. Nasrallah tells us that psychiatrists who are not speaking the new language of the “neuroscientification” of psychiatry will soon be rendered obsolete. He says that we are at the “tipping point” in psychiatry, giving up the “primitive notions that have guided the profession for the past century,” and moving toward explaining our successes and failures in terms of microglial activation, inflammatory markers, apoptosis, S100B, and NOTCH 3. Those who talk about ego strengths, defense mechanisms, resilience, the unconscious mind, and the human spirit are “clinical dinosaurs.”
Sadly, Dr. Nasrallah speaks for many psychiatric academicians today, who believe the best way to understand the complexity of the human condition is to explain it in terms of neurotransmitters, genomics, and MRIs. But the truth is, no matter how much we know about the brain, the mind will always have a mind of its own. The language of science cannot adequately explain the mystery that is an essential part of the human experience.
The brain is hardwired for mystical experiences. We are biologically programmed to experience transcendent states that allow us to see the familiar from a new perspective, and to experience the awesome. It matters less how we explain the mechanics of the mysterious than it does to know it is important. To all my academic colleagues who herald in the “neuroscientification” of psychiatry, and the obsolescence of clinicians who still explore the unconscious mind, I say let’s not take ourselves too seriously. Awe is the mechanism by which we tame the ego.
Carl Hammerschlag, MD
Arizona Health Services Center
University of Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona