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Abstract
As a tongue-in-cheek expression of protest, the author uses the term biomania to characterize excessive enthusiasm for exclusively biological approaches to psychiatry, while fully appreciating the increasingly vital contributions of neuroscience to the profession. Advocating science-informed humanism, the article brings to bear psychological and philosophical thinking on age-old problems now informed by neuroscience, including free will, the mind–brain relation, and the nature of consciousness. All these problems are pertinent to understanding patients and to educating them and their family members in this age of biological psychiatry. Clinicians in all mental health disciplines must strive to balance science and humanism in their therapeutic endeavors without sacrificing either to the other. This article provides some guidance for that aspiration.
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Notes on contributors
Jon G. Allen
Jon G. Allen, PhD, is a senior staff psychologist and Helen Malsin Palley Chair in Mental Health Research at The Menninger Clinic and Professor of Psychiatry at the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine.