Science, psychiatry and psychotherapy

Tony Coates

doi:10.9791/ajpanz.1997.07

Tony Coates

DOI: https://doi.org/10.9791/ajpanz.1997.07

Abstract

The paper is a critical deconstruction of the medical model. I examine the medical model in medicine, and how it drives psychiatry and psychotherapy. Using the notion of 'structure determinism' as outlined by Humberto Maturana (Chilean neurobiologist and leading constructivist thinker) I demonstrate the confusion that inevitably arises in daily life when theories about, explanations of, and metaphors for, human behaviour and conduct are confused with psychological processes.

I suggest that such theories are about human conduct and therefore are a part of ethics and religion and do not belong to medicine proper. Considering such explanations, theories, and metaphors to belong to medicine, maintains a power of medical expertise to predict and control human conduct. To this extent the medical model in psychiatry and psychotherapy is an issue of power and control and hence belongs to ethics and morality, and not to medicine.

I also suggest that human freedom, responsibility, dignity, and integrity may lie in reclaiming such expertise for oneself.

Author Biography

Tony Coates

As recorded in 1997.

MBChB, Cert Ontological Coaching, MNZAP. Medical psychotherapist. Works under contract to Auckland Occupational Health and at Henderson House. Also in private practice. Has a long-standing interest in language and the biology of cognition, and has researched the work of Maturana and Varela for many years in Australia and the USA.