[Biological basis of psychiatry]

Psychiatry had retained the status of art rather than science for longer than other branches of medicine. However, the views that psychiatric disorders have material basis, existing since antiquity, had eventually been accepted by modern medicine, in spite of troubles connected with the rise of analytical psychiatry. Presently, there are no doubts that structural and functional integration of the brain is a prerequisite of psychical health. The psychical processes are presently regarded as neurobiological phenomena, and the technical progress, particularly brain imaging techniques, allow to investigate, with objective methods, even phenomena such as consciousness, that for long remained in the domain of philosophy. The applied success of biological psychiatry is the introduction of effective psychotropic drugs. It cannot be forgotten, however, that psychotherapeutic methods (which also have neurobiological roots), are as indispensable as psychopharmacotherapy in a modern psychiatric clinic.