ABSTRACT
Psychiatry definitely has passed through its infancy and, after a somewhat hectic adolescence, has come of age. Signs of maturity can be observed in many ways. While at the beginning of the century Kraepelin, Bleuler, Freud, and Jung still hoped to find universal laws of normal and abnormal functioning, contemporary psychiatrists have become more cautious. The period of sweeping generalizations is over, and the field has become more pragmatic and relativistic, and the psychiatrist more modest. The social therapies are designed to alter existing conditions and they approach this task by influencing both the social system and the individual. The social system can be modified as follows: By introducing new organizational structures or removing obsolete ones. In every society the desirable and the undesirable social patterns are a matter of public knowledge. On the American scene, for example, early parental deprivation, maternal over-protection, broken families, repeated change of foster homes, authoritarianism, withdrawal, and dependence are mentioned among the undesirable patterns.
