Alexander Moreira-Almeida,1 Saulo de F. Araujo,2 C. Robert Cloninger3
1Departamento de Clinica Medica, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, MG, Brazil. 2Departamento de Psicologia, UFJF, Juiz de Fora, MG, Brazil. 3Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Objective: The mind-brain problem (MBP) has marked implications for psychiatry, but has been poorly discussed in the psychiatric literature. This paper evaluates the presentation of the MBP in the three leading general psychiatry journals during the last 20 years.
Methods: Systematic review of articles on the MBP published in the three general psychiatry journals with the highest impact factor from 1995 to 2015. The content of these articles was analyzed and discussed in the light of contemporary debates on the MBP.
Results: Twenty-three papers, usually written by prestigious authors, explicitly discussed the MBP and received many citations (mean = 130). The two main categories were critiques of dualism and defenses of physicalism (mind as a brain product). These papers revealed several misrepresentations of theoretical positions and lacked relevant contemporary literature. Without further discussion or evidence, they presented the MBP as solved, dualism as an old-fashioned or superstitious idea, and physicalism as the only rational and empirically confirmed option.
Conclusion: The MBP has not been properly presented and discussed in the three leading psychiatric journals in the last 20 years. The few articles on the topic have been highly cited, but reveal misrepresentations and lack of careful philosophical discussion, as well as a strong bias against dualism and toward a materialist/physicalist approach to psychiatry.
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One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted –
One need not be a House –
The Brain has Corridors – surpassing Material Place
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External ghost
Than its interior Confronting
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop
The Stones a’chase-
Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter –
In lonesome Place –
Ourself behind ourself, concealed –
Should startle most –
Assassin hid in our apartment
Be Horror’s least.
The Body – borrows a Revolver –
He bolts the Door –
O’erlooking a superior spectre –
Or More –
Emily Dickinson
“The therapeutic orthodoxy that the patient should learn to engage with the larger world on the world’s terms.”
J. M. Coetzee, The Making of Samuel Becket
INQUIRIM VITAE 