Western Humanism, Modern Liberal Politics, and Psychiatric Training: Friends or Foes?
ARNOLD J. MANDELL M.D.1
1 Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, Calif. 92037
Liberalism once nourished the growth of an enlightened humanism upon the rigid constructs of analytic psychiatry. The New Left promulgates definitions of psychiatrists that are inimical to the basic postulates of psychiatry. They involve the nature of mental illness. individual responsibility for it, and the role of the professional in relation to it. American psychiatric education is challenged to train people who can cure the ills of society, but would be denied by the New Left the very tools with which we have learned to heal.
