ABSTRACT
Mind, body and soul: modern orthodox Western medicine both separates and brings together these three concepts. It separates because there are specialities devoted to neurology and the nervous system (the body), while psychiatry focuses on mental health and illness (the mind) or what lay people may call ‘nerves’. The soul is rarely mentioned. Western medicine tends to adopt the Cartesian dualism approach attributed to Descartes (1596-1650), the concept of which originates from the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. Plato stated that the source of intelligence could not be identifi ed within the physical body, believing that the mind is non-physical. Descartes argued further that the mind is different from the brain thus leading to the idea of mind/ body dualism. Thus we have physicians for the body and psychiatrists for the mind. The spiritual side of human beings is delegated to the priest, holy man or guru and is rarely ventured into by the health professional.
