Psychology and psychotropic drugs.

Discusses issues that need to be considered in psychology's internal debate on whether to seek the right to prescribe psychotropic drugs. For example, psychology offers a decisive alternative to medical model. Within this philosophy of psychology, psychiatry's treatment of the person as an organism misses the essential humanity of psychological life. With the exception of some psychoanalysts, psychiatrists are seen from this theoretical perspective as fundamentally misguided in their use of psychotropic drugs which merely mask the symptoms rather than face the genuinely human problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology as a human science.

In commenting on an article by G. A. Kimble (see record 1986-07921-001) on the conflicts between scientific and humanistic concerns in psychology, the present author agrees with Kimble that psychology's contemporary acceptance of once-taboo cognitive research topics fails to overcome this schism and reconsiders Kimble's pessimistic conclusion that this factual dichotomy is an essential one. The usefulness of a conceptualization of psychology as a human science is discussed. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)