ABSTRACT
Psychological treatment plays a central role in the latter in a way that it doesn’t in the former. Nevertheless, even in the case of depression, there will be cases where treatment primarily targets the brain, either in the form of medication or, more controversially, Electro-Convulsive Therapy. Aetiological or causal explanation and treatment do not yield clear boundaries between brain disorders and mental disorders. Type identity may seem like too strong a relationship because of the possibility that one type of mental state may be realized by more than one type of brain state. The hardware/software distinction is frequently employed by functionalist theories of the mind which clearly distinguish between properties at the mental and physical level. In this chapter, the author have considered a different approach, which is to investigate whether certain views on the metaphysics of the mind–body relationship have implications for the mental dysfunction/brain dysfunction relationship, and consequently, for the mental disorder/brain disorder one.
