The field of academic psychiatry is in crisis, everywhere. It is not merely a health crisis of resource scarcity or distribution, competing claims and practice models, or level of development from one country to another, but a deeper, more fundamental crisis about the very definition and the theoretical basis of psychiatry. The kinds of questions that represent this crisis include whether psychiatry is a social science (like psychology or anthropology), whether it is better understood as part of the humanities (like philosophy, history, and literature), or if the future of psychiatry is best assured as a branch of medicine (based on genetics and neuroscience)? In fact, the question often debated since the beginning of modern psychiatry concerns the biomedical model so that part of psychiatry's perpetual self-questioning is to what extent it is or is not a branch of medicine. This unique and bold volume offers a representative and critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry with deeply informed transdisciplinary readings of the literature and practices of the field by two professors of psychiatry who are active in practice and engaged in research and have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy. In alternating chapters presenting contrasting arguments for the future of psychiatry, the two authors conclude with a dialogue between them to flesh out the theoretical, research, and practical implications of psychiatry's current crisis, outlining areas of divergence, consensus, and fruitful collaborations to revision psychiatry today. The volume is scrupulously documented but written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research, and practice for the student and practitioner alike in the social and human sciences and in medicine, psychiatry, and the neurosciences.

The field of academic psychiatry is in crisis, everywhere. It is not merely a health crisis of resource scarcity or distribution, competing claims and practice models, or level of development from one country to another, but a deeper, more fundamental crisis about the very definition and the theoretical basis of psychiatry. The kinds of questions that represent this crisis include whether psychiatry is a social science (like psychology or anthropology), whether it is better understood as part of the humanities (like philosophy, history, and literature), or if the future of psychiatry is best assured as a branch of medicine (based on genetics and neuroscience)? In fact, the question often debated since the beginning of modern psychiatry concerns the biomedical model so that part of psychiatry's perpetual self-questioning is to what extent it is or is not a branch of medicine. This unique and bold volume offers a representative and critical survey of the history of modern psychiatry with deeply informed transdisciplinary readings of the literature and practices of the field by two professors of psychiatry who are active in practice and engaged in research and have dual training in scientific psychiatry and philosophy. In alternating chapters presenting contrasting arguments for the future of psychiatry, the two authors conclude with a dialogue between them to flesh out the theoretical, research, and practical implications of psychiatry's current crisis, outlining areas of divergence, consensus, and fruitful collaborations to revision psychiatry today. The volume is scrupulously documented but written in accessible language with capsule summaries of key areas of theory, research, and practice for the student and practitioner alike in the social and human sciences and in medicine, psychiatry, and the neurosciences.

Two novellas written during the "3-Day Novel Contest" "The World's Most Notorious Literary Marathon" After Fernando is a fictional dream about the life of Ophelia Queiroz after the death of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. When a young stranger appears at her house in Lisbon, Ophelia takes him on a journey of the "perfect day" she has been assembling in her memory room with the poems and letters of the four poetic heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa. Crowd Theory is a twitter novella whose avatars post 140-character microblogs. Pitting individualist I_Scrivener against social psychiatrist Dr. Krishna Dhere, author of Crowd Theory, the Bible of The Collective, a dangerous intellectual game begins. The two stage a debate for very high stakes - suicide: the surrender of Scrivener's identity to merge with The Collective. Between them, these novellas chart the territory between saudade - the portentous Portuguese longing for the past, and Futurism - the fervent Italian artistic movement that celebrated speed, a break with the past, and presaged Fascism.

In these seven letters, practising psychiatrist Vincenzo Di Nicola offers wisdom to a young therapist from 25 years of experience conducting relational therapy. Ranging from what to read and how to begin therapy, the letters cover therapeutic temperaments and technique, how to create a relational dialogue, the myths of individual psychology and the need for relational psychology, the evolution of therapy in the past century and when therapy is over-all the while looking forward to the relational practices of the coming community. This book complements Di Nicola's model of working with families presented in A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy (New York and London: W.W. Norton). -- It's a beautiful idea, this project of turning to young people... The relational dialogue offers an important new direction of study to discover the deep basis of the therapeutic alliance, in order to understand the still too-little known phenomenon of "change..". This is what you have brought together in your book: the search for the whole regarding the person and, at the same time, the network of primary affective relationships that we call the family and of social relationships ... -from the Foreword by Maurizio Andolfi, MD, Director of the Academy of Family Psychotherapy, Professor of Psychology, University of Rome Author description: Vincenzo Di Nicola, M.D. is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and relational therapist in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. After studies in clinical psychology, medicine and psychiatry, Di Nicola trained and collaborated in family therapy with Mara Selvini Palazzoli and Maurizio Andolfi and more recently in global mental health with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. He has held clinical and teaching appointments at the universities of Ottawa, Queen's and McGill and is an Honorary Professor of Law in Minas Gerais, Brazil and a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal and a doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School.