By Prudence L. Gourguechon on 12/7/2008 3:52 PM
There's a journal I've subscribed to for a couple of years that I like very much. It's called Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology (PPP) and is a joint American-- British effort with an international editorial board of, not surprisingly, psychiatrists, psychologists and philosophers.
The latest issue is devoted to a consideration of George Engel's biopsychosocial model, which Engel unveiled in 1977 and which had a tremendous impact on medicine and psychiatry. Being a person with a very practical turn of mind, I always loved Engel's theory, so I was delighted to see the special issue in PPP. For me it immediately served as an organizing principle for clinical work that never lost its utility.
When I fret about contemporary health care policy, with its corporate flavors of pay for performance and misusing the valuable scientific approach of seeking evidence for the effectiveness of treatments to curtail treatment provision, I think of the corrective that the biopsychosocial model can immediately provide for health care policy.
Bradley Lewis, in the lead article in the journal, says that
the biopsychosocial model has become a beacon for the balanced and humanistic approach to clinical encounters. Indeed, it has become a beacon for the soul of medicine and psychiatry in the twenty first century.
The lead article in the Engel issue of PPP considers the question of whether the biopsychosocial model fits with the principles of philosophical pragmatism. Being too pragmatic to be philosophic, I can't address the question, but it interests me. Can psychoanalysis be pragmatic?
President-elect Obama has been announcing his cabinet appointments over the last week or two, and I noticed that the descriptor "pragmatic" was used in more than one introduction. Suddenly pragmatism is in the air. That's interesting.
I got in touch with the co-editor of PPP, John Z Sadler, who is professor of psychiatry, and, among other distinguished roles is Chief of the Division of Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He mentioned that the journal has had substantive contributions from psychoanalytic scholars over the years, and welcomes submissions. He also told me that they are always looking for good peer reviewers and would welcome some new psychoanalytic reviewers. Psychoanalysts interested in reviewing for PPP should contact Dr. Sadler by email (linda.muncy@utsouthwestern.edu). |