[Can psychiatry become neuropsychiatry?]

Today more and more often there are prognoses that in the future psychiatry will have been absorbed by neurology. It would be thanks to the stormy progress of research on the neurophysiological, genetic and molecular foundations of mental disorders. The aim of the article is to assess the possibility as well as the supposed consequences of such an evolution of psychiatry. The considerations concern the peculiarity of the object of interest and the methods used in psychiatry in relation to the neurological object and methodology. This way the appraisal of raison d'etre of one common science: neuropsychiatry becomes possible. The question of fundamental importance for the evaluation of similarities and differences between the psychiatric and neurological perspectives is the way the psychophysical issue and especially the problem of the mind-brain relation are approached. The article presents the manners of solving these problems proposed by the contemporary philosophy of the mind. Together with parting with the full of errors and simplifications heritage of Descartes it appears the necessity to regard the presence of subjective mental states both conscious and unconscious in model of mind-brain relation. The example of such a solution is the biological naturalism of John Searle. The psychical life of the man in its subjective dimension remains the peculiar area of interests for psychiatry irrespective of the progress in research on the biological base of mental disorders. The especially valuable cognitive and therapeutic tool in this aspect is psychotherapy constituting the integral part of psychiatry. The present state of knowledge does not indicate that the psychotherapeutic wing of psychiatry can lose its importance and rather somewhat the contrary. The progress of neurobiology does not have to threaten the autonomy of psychiatry by any means and the maintenance of this autonomy depends decisively on the psychiatrists themselves.