The Practice of Psychiatry

[EmilKraepelin55]

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As an MS2, I find myself drawn heavily to medical issues concerning the nervous system. I find myself, more often than not, naturally inquisitive of most topics relating to the nervous system both from a neurological and behavioral standpoint. I am also a big ideas sort of person, and find myself dwelling on concepts in the arts and philosophy in my off time away from my medical studies and I tend to enjoy the integration of ideas within these fields with my thoughts on medicine and neuroscience as a whole. That being said, given my interests and studies, psychiatry in a theoretical way has always seemed to be sort of a bastion that integrates and cultivates those interests in a more pragmatic way. However, I obviously have not done a rotation in psychiatry yet. My only experience in the field was as a volunteer in a geropsychiatric ward prior to matriculation to medical school.

So ultimately, I was just wondering if any of you resonate with these thoughts and feelings I have? Was psychiatry more or less of what you thought it would be? I am sorry if I come off as vague but I didn’t want to drone on and on lol!

Thanks, and I appreciate your input!

 

[wolfvgang22]

Of course, and yes.
Do your rotations and see what you think. That is what they are for! You may also be interested in Neurology.

 

[clausewitz2]

As an MS2, I find myself drawn heavily to medical issues concerning the nervous system. I find myself, more often than not, naturally inquisitive of most topics relating to the nervous system both from a neurological and behavioral standpoint. I am also a big ideas sort of person, and find myself dwelling on concepts in the arts and philosophy in my off time away from my medical studies and I tend to enjoy the integration of ideas within these fields with my thoughts on medicine and neuroscience as a whole. That being said, given my interests and studies, psychiatry in a theoretical way has always seemed to be sort of a bastion that integrates and cultivates those interests in a more pragmatic way. However, I obviously have not done a rotation in psychiatry yet. My only experience in the field was as a volunteer in a geropsychiatric ward prior to matriculation to medical school.

So ultimately, I was just wondering if any of you resonate with these thoughts and feelings I have? Was psychiatry more or less of what you thought it would be? I am sorry if I come off as vague but I didn’t want to drone on and on lol!

Thanks, and I appreciate your input!

Psychiatry is definitely the field you are looking for. Neurology can be fascinating but the day to day reality is much more like another specialty of Internal Medicine.

History and philosophy of psychiatry is its own intellectual field, distinct from philosophy of mind or cognitive science.. The same is not true of neurology.

Read this forum and you can see we are a bunch who often wax intellectual at some length. Not to say everyone in psychiatry is here for a symposium but it draws a certain type.

 

[Dharma]

Psychiatry is definitely the field you are looking for. Neurology can be fascinating but the day to day reality is much more like another specialty of Internal Medicine.

History and philosophy of psychiatry is its own intellectual field, distinct from philosophy of mind or cognitive science.. The same is not true of neurology.

Read this forum and you can see we are a bunch who often wax intellectual at some length. Not to say everyone in psychiatry is here for a symposium but it draws a certain type.

Momentary thread derail: Any recommended readings on the philosophy of psychiatry? It's a topic- even simply philosophy in general- many do not even tread upon.

 

[clausewitz2]

Momentary thread derail: Any recommended readings on the philosophy of psychiatry? It's a topic- even simply philosophy in general- many do not even tread upon.

A really fantastic introductory text is the Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Psychiatry. That and Rachel Cooper's Philosophy and Psychiatry is good to start. Book number 2, I tend to recommend Jonathan Sadler's Values and Psychiatric Diagnosis or Peter Zachar's A Metaphysics of Psychopathology.

Can also check out the Journal of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology.

 

[EmilKraepelin55]

Momentary thread derail: Any recommended readings on the philosophy of psychiatry? It's a topic- even simply philosophy in general- many do not even tread upon.

I am actually reading through Nietzsche’s “Human, All too Human” at the moment in which he provides a contemporary critique of the state of the philosophy of mind and moral reasoning. It’s quite interesting to see how things have progressed, and how ahead of his time he truly was especially given that our current understanding of cognitive psychology and neuroscience is really shaping up to provide a very solid contribution to the freewill debate.

 

[EmilKraepelin55]

A really fantastic introductory text is the Bloomsbury Companion to Philosophy of Psychiatry. That and Rachel Cooper's Philosophy and Psychiatry is good to start. Book number 2, I tend to recommend Jonathan Sadler's Values and Psychiatric Diagnosis or Peter Zachar's A Metaphysics of Psychopathology.

Can also check out the Journal of Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology.

How does an understanding of the philosophy of psychiatry shape your current practice?

 

[clausewitz2]

How does an understanding of the philosophy of psychiatry shape your current practice?

So on a very practical level, it keeps me interested in what I am doing and wards off burnout as it is easier to find meaning in things.

Zoomed out a bit, it steered me towards a phenomenological appreciation of the work, in the Husserl/Heidegger sense of phenomenology rather than the DSM sense. Attending to the intersubjective field and bracketing off your own notions of what is true and right and good in order to better inhabit the patient's reality is something all good psychiatrists do but phenomenological philosophy can show you how to do that in a structured way. It also allows you to use intuition systematically and turn it into a keen instrument rather than as just a vague gut feeling. Also, patients are generally most interested in what it is like to take a particular medication when they ask questions about it rather than some specific side effect and I am able to answer those questions better.

From a more analytical tradition, thinking about issues of ontology helps keep my thinking flexible and appropriately skeptical about current DSM dogma without just being a knee-jerk contrarían. Modern moral philosophy also clarifies my thinking about what a psychiatrist should be like morally which shapes everything. Sadler and Radden's The Virtuous Psychiatrist is a book length treatment of this.

Philosophy of science more generally is very helpful in knowing what inferences RCTs do and do not license and not swallowing the EBM dogma hook, line and sinker.

 

[Ripr00t]

Momentary thread derail: Any recommended readings on the philosophy of psychiatry? It's a topic- even simply philosophy in general- many do not even tread upon.

Written by the course coordinator of a unit I took separate to my medical degree: Philosophy of Psychiatry (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)