Psychiatry and Psychotherapy: Is a Divorce Imminent?

Despite the long tradition of psychiatrists practicing psychotherapy, many psychiatric and medical leaders are predicting and urging a reorientation of psychiatry toward the medical model. They would leave psychotherapy to psychologists, social workers and the like. Many social, governmental and institutional factors favor such a change. The marriage of psychiatry and psychotherapy has always been an uneasy one, and the push for divorce may be irresistible. The author cautions that a divorce could be detrimental to medicine by substituting, in the name of “science,” a dehumanized, technological psychiatry for the current “moral” treatment. One alternative to divorce is a broader approach to psychiatry, combining biological, neuromedical, socioenvironmental and psychodynamic factors. The divorce, though imminent, should be resisted.