Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses subject matters that pose challenging and often uncomfortable questions, reflects on that the psychotherapy field, social and medical sciences, and policy-makers. It explores the complex dichotomies that surround a classical Greek construct that survived two and half millennia, dualism, and the dark ages. The book considers the thorny subjects of intelligence and consent is inevitably also a wider societal issue with a bearing on a number of professional fields, including medicine and social care. It also explores the multi-layered relations between psychotherapy culture and concepts, on the one hand, and their impact on general culture and society, on the other. The book reviews how the understanding of mental illness evolved and offers a number of alternative perspectives to the, in Western societies, dominating "degenerative brain disorder" construct that can be explored by patients and their therapists to facilitate recovery.