An application of the philosophy of science to psychiatry
Although it's been 140 years since Maudley's groundbreaking treatise, modern psychiatry is in a state of intellectual collapse. No psychiatrist practicing today can point to a universally agreed model of mental disorder, which explains the common observations of mental disorder, dictates a research program and ordains a form of management.
This book, the result of thirty years research in the philosophy of science, takes each of the major theories in psychiatry and demonstrates conclusively that it is so flawed as to be beyond salvation. It goes further, in that the author outlines a model of mental function which both satisfies the essential requirements of any scientific model, and shows how the phenomena of mental disorder can be described in a parsimonious dualist model which leads directly to a humanist form of management of the most widespread form of disability in the world today.
