A program for late twentieth-century psychiatry

The author argues against conceptions of the current state of psychiatry that either accept eclecticism as natural or treat some specific biological or psychodynamic model as the true core of psychiatry. He presents a unified program for biological and psychodynamic explanation and therapy. The biological aspect of this agenda supports a unitary view of mental illness but dissociates this view from reductionist premises. The psychological aspect treats particular psychodynamic theories, including Freud's, as special cases of a more basic account of affect and imagination. The program has unequivocal diagnostic, explanatory, and therapeutic implications as well as a larger social meaning.