The revolution in psychiatry1964
the new understanding of man.
by Ernest Becker
Dr. Becker, theoretician and author of The Birth and Death of Meaning: A Perspective in Psychiatry and Anthropology, combines his philosophic behaviorism with a humanistic version of social psychiatry in an attempt to provide a base for a new science of man -- an interdisciplinary ""man-centered"" science. He draws substantiation for his orientation and theses mainly from Dewey and Allport and emphasizes the social nature of the influences that have molded the ""symbolic animal"" -- man. He offers a detailed non-medical analysis of the nature of schizorenia and depression to show that biologically oriented medical psychiatry must fail in its attempt to understand these so-called ""mental illnesses"" because of its narrowly posited and unhistorical perspective. He sees these ills as results...