ABSTRACT

The influence of the dominant psychiatric model can be traced in various aspects of psychiatric activity. It is easy to identify the philosophical background of some psychiatric models; for example, epiphenomenalism underlies the medical model. "Knowledge in psychiatry," they write, "is far outstripped by theories and opinions and these are allowed to flourish because the evidence needed to contradict them is not available". The relocation of psychiatry back into medicine is supposed to be a collateral and worthy effect of such new state of affairs. Eclectic psychiatry is not a particular psychiatric model. "Given the countless tributaries that flow into clinical psychiatry, it goes without saying that psychiatry is an eclectic discipline". Eclectic psychiatry might mean the simultaneous application of the principles of the medical, the psychological, and the social-cultural model. Pragmatic psychiatry is but one of many failed attempts to resolve the psychiatric conceptual cacophony or appease it at the very least.