Psy-Disciplines and the Social Sciences (1)

Abstract

It is common practice in medicine today to explain mental disorders from the perspective of the so-called biopsychosocial approach, which integrates biological facts, psychological concepts, and an awareness of the social processes that influence the course of diseases. Although this disciplinary eclecticism has repeatedly been criticised by both medicine and psychiatry as well as by the social sciences, the contributions to this discussion raise the question of whether it is actually possible to find common ground and reach an understanding in a dialogue between representatives of different disciplines. In the current and next issue of the journal, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, sociologists and anthropologists, drawing on their own experience, discuss the possibility of collaboration between the psy-disciplines and the humanities and social sciences. The discussion will address the institutional and practical challenges that specialists face in attempting to overcome interdisciplinary barriers and methodological problems that seem insurmountable to them, and the potential mutual benefits of such collaboration, which, in light of this discussion, no longer seem Utopian. A variety of opinions, illustrating the problems of interdisciplinarity and the inadequacy of this kind of interaction, form a dramatised dialogue divided into two “acts”.