Book Description

Excerpt from The Basis of Psychiatry (Psychobiological Medicine) A Guide to the Study of Mental Disorders, for Students and Practitioners As the domain of general medicine in recent years has become considerably broadened, and many of the newer facts have been brought to light through the channels of Biology, and as the field of "traditional General Physiology" has become more or less fully occupied by Experimental Biology, so the mode of approach to the problems of Psychiatry is following similar trends. This change in the direction of approach to psychiatry has come about through the development of a closer relationship between the subjects of biology and psychology; in fact, the two branches of science overlap to the extent that in the study of many problems it is difficult to determine where the one begins and the other ends, for the reason that it is but the same "science" viewed from different aspects. The statement in a text-book on psychology that "Psychology is the science of behavior" presents one of the striking evidences of the change in point of view of the psychologist, which is steadily developing and is becoming more widely accepted. As physicians and practitioners we have come to consider the group of mental disorders which belong to the class of recoverable psychoses not primarily as mental diseases, but as reflections of some bodily disorder, which, through its effect upon the organ of adjustment - the nervous mechanism and its lower and higher (psychic) reflexes - prevents the patient from making appropriate adaptations to environmental conditions, and therefore constitutes a thoroughly biological problem. The reactions of the patient as a whole individual form the subject underlying every problem in psychiatry. In order to solve the question there must be an examination of all bodily functions before an intelligent conclusion can be reached from the standpoint of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of the mental condition. In the present work there has been an attempt to present to the student of psychiatry, the practitioner of medicine and others interested in the disorders of adjustment, an arrangement of the subjects in a concise form, yet embracing a sufficient number of biological and psychological data to indicate the course which this viewpoint requires us to follow. As a method of approach to the study of psychiatry the present mode of presentation has been found useful to the writer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.