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"Advances in genetics, neuroscience and psychopharmacology all at once reminded psychiatrists that biology ruled, that talk could be dispensed with, and a truly

"Advances in genetics, neuroscience and psychopharmacology all at once reminded psychiatrists that biology ruled, that talk could be dispensed with, and a truly medical psychiatry could finally emerge" I don't know if this is true for a good chunk of mental illnesses, tbh. How does one use a purely biological model and treatment for PTSD, BPD, ASPD, etc?

SubiculumCode 7y ago
Hard to evaluate without being able to read the full article, but Freud has very little to do with modern psychological/psychiatric research.
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  This was my first remark when reading this intro. Side-unrelated note, I wish paywalled sites would at least have the decency to produce an abstract. It's always a sad day when ideas are hidden behind a gatekeeper.
ahnick 7y ago
Psychiatry and drugs are essentially our caveman like tools for trying to manipulate the structure of the brain. Imagine at some point we are technologically able to rewire individual neurons and change chemical pathways in focused areas of the brain. Perhaps at some point we can artificially grow whole clusters of neurons and then implant or replace bad clusters. Once we have better tools and can edit the fundamental components of the brain (or really any part of our biology), then traditional medical fields and industries will be completely disrupted.
yomly 7y ago
We struggle to model individual proteins in full, and we think we can apply a comprehensive biological model to the mind? I can say with confidence that the abstraction of chemistry in physiology is not watertight (is that a pun...?) and we still barely understand physiological chemistry in any kind of way that any self-respecting scientist could describe as rigorous. The hubris of some people in their fields...
- dmix 7y ago
  People build abstractions all the time on top of things they don’t think biochemistry is going to teach us much about IRL psychological issues. Humans have excellent pattern matching, reasoning, and lots of research into the subject. I do believe there is value in doing it. That said, I’m highly skeptical of a lot of talk therapy, beyond the simple gains of saying things out loud to a 3rd party and challenging your mind and assumptions.
K0SM0S 7y ago
I even take issue with the premise: “psychiatry rightly saw mental illness as rooted in biology, more specifically in the brain.” This statement is far from the big picture, imho. We've identified that the bulk of neurons rests below the brain, that hormones are being produced elsewhere (e.g. around the heart, or the intestine) that have a dramatic effect on conditions like depression (or lack thereof). See The Second Brain[1] by Michael D. Gershon for a primer on your intestine. I personally think reducing mental life to the brain is just as shortsighted as reducing a computer to its CPU: sure, you can do CS with such abstractions, but not deal with real-life implementation. It's paper-theory, not applied practice. And purely abstract models have a way of not wanting to fit reality as well as we'd wish... Ideas that we are what we eat (quite literally so), or that physical exercise helps mental strength, tend to show that even for processes seemingly 'happening' locally in the brain, the whole neural system and by extension the whole body plays a part (if only as "infrastructure", but possibly more so in an "edge / core" fashion — aren't we but a big IS after all like any living system, however esoteric to us the physical processes). Anyway, not a neuroscientist, maybe just a cheeky dev who likes to challenge ideas, but the whole fantasized body/mind dichotomy is only furthered when we say "oh it's all physical but it's only the brain that affects mental/mind processes". You've just moved the magic black-box from "otherworldly" to "physically located in the brain" — that's better, but not quite there yet. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/636974.The_Second_Brain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/636974.The_Second_Brain

SubiculumCode 7y ago

Hard to evaluate without being able to read the full article, but Freud has very little to do with modern psychological/psychiatric research.

K0SM0S 7y ago
This was my first remark when reading this intro. Side-unrelated note, I wish paywalled sites would at least have the decency to produce an abstract. It's always a sad day when ideas are hidden behind a gatekeeper.

ahnick 7y ago

Psychiatry and drugs are essentially our caveman like tools for trying to manipulate the structure of the brain. Imagine at some point we are technologically able to rewire individual neurons and change chemical pathways in focused areas of the brain. Perhaps at some point we can artificially grow whole clusters of neurons and then implant or replace bad clusters. Once we have better tools and can edit the fundamental components of the brain (or really any part of our biology), then traditional medical fields and industries will be completely disrupted.

yomly 7y ago

We struggle to model individual proteins in full, and we think we can apply a comprehensive biological model to the mind? I can say with confidence that the abstraction of chemistry in physiology is not watertight (is that a pun...?) and we still barely understand physiological chemistry in any kind of way that any self-respecting scientist could describe as rigorous. The hubris of some people in their fields...

dmix 7y ago
People build abstractions all the time on top of things they don’t think biochemistry is going to teach us much about IRL psychological issues. Humans have excellent pattern matching, reasoning, and lots of research into the subject. I do believe there is value in doing it. That said, I’m highly skeptical of a lot of talk therapy, beyond the simple gains of saying things out loud to a 3rd party and challenging your mind and assumptions.

K0SM0S 7y ago

I even take issue with the premise: “psychiatry rightly saw mental illness as rooted in biology, more specifically in the brain.” This statement is far from the big picture, imho. We've identified that the bulk of neurons rests below the brain, that hormones are being produced elsewhere (e.g. around the heart, or the intestine) that have a dramatic effect on conditions like depression (or lack thereof). See The Second Brain[1] by Michael D. Gershon for a primer on your intestine. I personally think reducing mental life to the brain is just as shortsighted as reducing a computer to its CPU: sure, you can do CS with such abstractions, but not deal with real-life implementation. It's paper-theory, not applied practice. And purely abstract models have a way of not wanting to fit reality as well as we'd wish... Ideas that we are what we eat (quite literally so), or that physical exercise helps mental strength, tend to show that even for processes seemingly 'happening' locally in the brain, the whole neural system and by extension the whole body plays a part (if only as "infrastructure", but possibly more so in an "edge / core" fashion — aren't we but a big IS after all like any living system, however esoteric to us the physical processes). Anyway, not a neuroscientist, maybe just a cheeky dev who likes to challenge ideas, but the whole fantasized body/mind dichotomy is only furthered when we say "oh it's all physical but it's only the brain that affects mental/mind processes". You've just moved the magic black-box from "otherworldly" to "physically located in the brain" — that's better, but not quite there yet. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/636974.The_Second_Brain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/636974.The_Second_Brain