From Jung At Heart (h/t to Dr X, who also posts a follow-up to that post), More than a civil war:
Steve Diamond made an interesting post last week describing the longstanding tension between the brain/behavioral and the mind/psychodynamic camps in psychology as a civil war. I have written here a number of times about this conflict, one that is at the heart of what is happening in psychiatry as well (if you are interested in the state of affairs in mental health, you really should read 1BoringOldMan who does a superb job of taking apart the trail of studies and inflated promises that got us here). I wish that what we are in were a civil war because then at least there would be active debate and engagement on these issues, but the takeover of psychology by the cognitive behavioral/brain folks is near complete on the academic level so that many younger clinicians have no idea of what is/was missing in their training. My side, the psychodynamic/mind side finds voice mostly through blogs like this one and those of other likeminded psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists. But together our voices are far less audible than those of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies and those of mental health professionals whose careers have been built on the effort to topple us. And the average person seeking help has no idea that these issues even exist. Yeah, it makes me kind of pessimistic at times.
I often feel that same way. Much of Psychiatric writing today has become so "medicalized," or "pseudo-medicalized," that you get the sense that it is check lists being treated rather than real people. Indeed, the two views of the patient - the hurting person - have developed different languages such that they cannot communicate well, and the alienation has become so extreme that I have heard them accuse eachother of malpractice.
Some of us attempt to straddle the divide, but it is difficult to rapidly alternate world-views.
