Psychiatric Domain Research Articles

Schizophrenia Demythologized—The Complexes Personified

Notes the relative loss of interest in individual psychotherapy of schizophrenia in recent years and how that loss is now being replaced with a more careful reassessment of the value of individual psychotherapy. Misunderstanding of schizophrenia has created a chasm between the practitioner and the counselee. Often left to psychiatric domain, pastoral psychotherapists traditionally have been reluctant to treat the schizophrenic. Explores the history of schizophrenia and the debate between psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. Presents some views on process and personal characteristics which are important in the ministry of healing the brokenness experienced by the schizophrenically inflicted counselee. Offers a case illustration followed by a clinical and theological discussion.

DSM-III: en psykodynamikers synpunkter

The psychiatry of DSM-III is simple and phenomenologic, and therefore both a strength and a weakness. DSM-III enables communication to the layman of the psychiatric domain. While on the one hand antipsychiatric debate argues for the non-existence of psychiatric disorder, on the other, some professionals and societies tend to medicalize everyday human problems and even conflict between individual and society. DSM-III is sound in its clear description of central psychiatric issues and in its exclusion of non-medical problems. The trouble with DSM-III is not what it says, but what it ignores. It does not describe the relation between personality and symptom. Nor are symptoms studied as attempts at interpersonal communication or intrapsychic conflict solution. Anxiety and Dysthymic disorders are unsorted gatherings of clinically different disturbances requiring different treatments. Axis II was no success. It reflects too much the interests of certain groups in the USA at that time to be of any use in the Nor...

Systematic analysis of research on religious variables in four major psychiatric journals, 1978-1982.

The authors conducted a systematic analysis of quantitative research on religious variables found in four psychiatric journals between 1978 and 1982. Of the 2,348 psychiatric articles reviewed, 59 included a quantified religious variable. In this research, the religious variable chosen was most often a single static measure of religion rather than multiple dynamic measures. In addition, other available religious research was seldom cited. Comparison with systematic analyses of religious research in psychology and sociology suggests that psychiatric research lacks conceptual and methodological sophistication. The data suggest that the academic knowledge and skills needed to evaluate religion have not been absorbed into the psychiatric domain.

Psychiatric pluralism in Bengal, India

By examining the pluralistic nature of the psychiatric domain in Bengal, India, the paper critically analyzes the concept of medical pluralism. Three varieties of pluralism are identified: the social institutional pluralism of the diverse specialists, the cultural cognitive pluralism of the client's conceptual frameworks, and the pluralism resulting from the divergent perspectives of clients and specialists. The paper argues that all three forms of pluralism can be better understood if pluralism is conceptualized in terms of actors' structuring activities and thus as an emergent product of social interaction.