Psychotherapy, biological psychiatry, and the nature of matter: a view from physics

Biological psychiatry has marginalized psychotherapy, and it is difficult for psychotherapists to counter its hegemony. The reductionist/materialist position seems incontrovertible and self-evident. An important factor in maintaining this stance is the belief that the physical world is understandable, solid, unproblematic, especially when compared to the realm of the psychological. Developments in quantum and relativity theories, however, cast doubt on that belief. They show the fundamental nature of the material world to be problematic, enigmatic, paradoxical, impossible to understand or conceptualize in terms of everyday experience. This insight weakens the prima facie case for privileging the material over the psychological, and alternative (i.e., nonneurobiological) approaches to mental health matters should, therefore, be able to compete on an equal footing. However, the materialist-reductionist stance is kept in place by powerful forces and is well defended; rational arguments alone are unlikely to have an impact. This pervasive ideological resistance to rational, often well-founded critiques of physical reductionism continues to be a major impediment to changing the present materialist climate. That resistance has to be addressed before any significant shift in orientation can be expected to occur.