Word: mind
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...plain, psychiatry, especially analysis, is now suffering a bad case of mid-life blues. Whatever else the Freudian movement accomplished, it raised hopes dramatically, set the stage for the narcissistic excesses of today's Me Decade, and propagated the notion that mind science was on the brink of blowing away all mental ills. "Psychiatry was overtouted," says Psychiatrist and Author Robert Coles. "Then there was the disenchantment, not only of patients, but also, of course, professionals " Adds Robert Michels, head of Cornell Medical Center's Payne Whitney Hospital and Clinic: "The public's enthusiasm for psychiatry 20 years...
...associates?voicing any thoughts that come to mind?the theory is that his unconscious difficulties will gradually break through into conscious thought. The analyst is generally passive and silent, offering no advice and speaking only to prod the patient into uncovering more nuggets from the inner recesses of the mind. The key to the Freudian "cure" is transference?the analyst replaces some crucial figure in the patient's background, usually a parent?and the patient eventually re-experiences blocked emotions and frees himself of the past...
...medical origins, preferring to see itself as a softer, almost humanistic discipline. Along with this greening of psychiatry, the myth developed that it might be able to cure such serious social illnesses as drug abuse, delinquency and crime. Many psychiatrists even wondered why specialists of the human mind had to go to medical school at all. But all that has changed; now the catch phrase is, "Getting back to our roots in medicine...
Although drugs have been used for decades to fight mental illness, scientists have not really understood how they worked. Now all that is changing. A miraculous pharmacopoeia is being explored to deal with every kind of ailment in the mind and body. Not too far off may be tailor-made drugs that will lull insomniacs into peaceful sleep, dull the throbbing of pain, organize a schizophrenic's thoughts and perhaps even simulate the pleasures...
...mind chemicals also hold promise for controlling emotional pain. Because the emotion-controlling amygdala region of the brain is rich in enkephalin receptors, scientists speculate that the molecules may act as a defense against disappointments and trauma. At the Salk Institute, Floyd Bloom is studying the possibility that endorphins may be involved in the pleasure received from alcohol and opiates. Once a person begins taking heroin, say, the natural production of endorphins may decrease. Thus, if addicts try to go cold turkey, the agony of withdrawal is severe. If scientists can create nonaddictive chemicals that bind, like the opiates...