Because most psychiatric illnesses are complex phenomena, no single method or approach is sufficient to explain them or the experiences of persons who have them. Yet in place of past dogmatisms, contemporary psychiatry has moved toward an "anything goes" eclecticism, resulting in much confusion. In The Concepts of Psychiatry, Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi argues that the discipline of psychiatry can be understood best from a pluralistic perspective that goes beyond both dogmatism and eclecticism. Grounding his approach in the works ...
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Because most psychiatric illnesses are complex phenomena, no single method or approach is sufficient to explain them or the experiences of persons who have them. Yet in place of past dogmatisms, contemporary psychiatry has moved toward an "anything goes" eclecticism, resulting in much confusion. In The Concepts of Psychiatry, Dr. S. Nassir Ghaemi argues that the discipline of psychiatry can be understood best from a pluralistic perspective that goes beyond both dogmatism and eclecticism. Grounding his approach in the works of Karl Jaspers, Paul McHugh, Phillip Slavney, Leston Havens, and others, Ghaemi presents a philosophical discussion of the strengths of a pluralistic model and the weaknesses of other approaches, such as biological or psychoanalytic theories and biopsychiosocial eclecticism. He also re-examines the nature of scientific method as applied to psychiatry and seeks to shed conceptual light on our current approach to psychiatric diagnosis. The paperback edition includes a new preface by the author.
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