BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

Psychotherapy is a process of discovery, a learning process. In it, we can work together to discover what events, situations and relationships in our current life or earlier life are leaving us with uncomfortable feelings or ways of dealing with our world that are not working as well as we want. We work toward acquiring new, effective, helpful ways of understanding our experiences and the events in our life, our responses to them and the actions we take. Psychotherapy, once was the dominant vehicle of psychiatric care, still the most distinctive aspect of psychiatric therapeutic armamentarium.

It was long held that psychotherapy is the treatment of psychologically based disorders, while biologically based disorders should be treated with medication. This view splits people into mind and brain. While the two constructs can be separated for purposes of discussion but they are always integrated and what we call mind can be understood as the activity of the brain although the complexity of one's unique subjectivity is not easily reducible to chemistry and physiology.

Mental illness cannot be just a chemical imbalance in the brain. Rather, it is a disharmony of body, brain, mind and spirit within the whole person: an inner conflict of the soul.