Abstract

Psychiatry uncomfortably spans biological, psychological, and social perspectives on mental illness. As a branch of medicine, psychiatry is under pressure to conform to a biomedical model, according to which diseases are characterized primarily in biological terms. But psychiatry also draws on the psychotherapeutic tradition, which explains mental distress in terms of life experience and social influences.These approaches ought to complement each other, but historically this has not happened. With no theory creating global, systematic links between the two approaches, psychiatry is divided...