Maggie's Farm

There are at least two main trends in Psychiatry in the US nowadays, with a large area of grey in between.

At one extreme, there are those who practice as if there were neither mind nor soul, as if there were nothing to a person but a bag of chemicals.

At the other extreme, those who practice as if there were no protoplasm and nothing but a bag of conflict and developmental/situational hang-ups.

Both extremes suffer from some form of psycho-utopianism. Most of us come in somewhere in some grey zone, in a confusing and challenging grey zone which keeps our brains working hard. A zone of ambiguity and mystery.

My close colleagues and I tend towards Dr. Levinson's view: Psychiatry’s Underground Economy. (It's not mainly about money, it's about how we think about patients.)