Abstract

Leonard L. Heston, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at The University of Washington and is the Director of The Washington Institute for Mental Illness Training and Research. Dr. Heston writes about "a QUIET revolution [which] has been occurring in psychiatry" . Dr. Heston's "new psychiatry" focuses on the "actual study of the brain as a biologic tissue" and avoids "elaborate theorizing, guru-isms, blaming of mothers for unhappiness, backbiting among contending schools, or [popular and simple] prescriptions for instant mental health. Such topics were a product of prescience..." . Heston wishes to distance himself from traditional Freudianism. Most importantly, according to Heston, his biological and scientific psychiatry portends greater hope for the "nearly one person in five [who] will develop a major psychiatric illness..."