J Korean Neuropsychiatr Assoc.
2002 Jan;41(1):7-11.
Mental Illnesses: Disease of Mind?
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Psychiatry, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Abstract
- Freud once emphasized the importance of both temperamental and environmental factors as the cause of mental illness while he discussed about 'the Nature and the Nurture'. And because of the limitation to discover the nature of the constitutional factor, he said, he focused on the environmental factor as the way through which we better approch to treat patients. As a psychoanalyst originally from neurological background, he though believed that there should be 'the biological bedrock' in every psychological phenominon. And one good example is that 'ego' comes from 'body ego'. Before and after him, in the history of psychiatry, the most popular idea is that body(brain) and mind are inseparable. During the past half century, there has been remarkable progress in the biological psychiatry field, which gives us a great opportunity to investigate the relationship between body and mind more in detail. So many biological psychiatrists suggest hypothetical theories to define the cause and the nature of mental illness. Some of them(like E Kendal) even darely propose the explanation of the psychological phenomena in biological terms. However, as Freud once hinted, we may never explain the nature of mental phenomena as a whole since there always will remain what we may never know no matter how hardly we try to know. It is because that is exactly the very nature of 'the unconsciousness' that is the most mystical part of brain.
