ABSTRACT
Drugs are the most commonly used physical therapies for the treatment of mental illness, but there are two others, ECT, which is in common use, and psychosurgery, which is now very rarely used. These raise even more emotive issues than does drug therapy because it is impossible to ignore the fact the brain is being directly manipulated, and the brain is accorded a unique status amongst all our organs. Interfering Witll the brain is often regarded as interfering in some way Witll an individual's essential being, the T that makes each of us unique, for the brain is seen as integral to the self in a way that an arm or a kidney is not, despite their importance. The relationship between the brain and self-consciousness is extremely complex and poorly understood, but that there is a relationship is indisputable. There is overwhelming evidence that the brain is intimately linked with our humanity through its neocortical development which distinguishes Homo sapiens from other animals. It is the nature of the relationship between brain function and self-consciousness that causes the problems and we must accept t1lat in our present state of knowledge all we can reasonably assert is that the elusive quality of Homo sapiens which we call self-consciousness is undeniably influenced by very complicated neural processes operating within the brain. In the broadest sense, of course, and ignoring the philosophical problems that the relationship raises, all mental functions can be argued ultimately to depend upon brain function: if the physical organism is indisputably dead, there can be no form of mental functioning.
