Potential questions of metapsychiatry

Abstract

The introduction presents different contents and historical aspects of the relation between philosophy and psychiatry, with the issues of metapsychiatry among the most general ones. Subsequently, several problems of metapsychiatry are addressed, as problematizing of psychiatric theory and practice. The questions to which metapsychiatry, alone or together with other sciences could provide answers, are briefly addressed. Those are primarily the issues of singularity and consistency of a particular psychiatric entity, the issue of causality in psychiatry, the reality of psychiatric categories, the issue of the relation of psychiatry and common sense, of modular or holistic organization of mental contents, the relation between practicism and intellectualism in psychiatry, of the Cartesian dilemma in psychiatry and the issue of autonomy of the contents of spiritual life. The main issue that metapsychiatry ought to provide an answer to is the relation between physical and psychic substantiality in psychiatry, solved until now, as e already said, from the viewpoints of idealistic nomism. materialism, neutral monism ontological epiphenomenalism, and Cartesian dualism. As a conclusion, the author points to certain advantages offered by metapsychiatric analyses, i.e. defragmenting the relation between philosophy and psychiatry.