PSYCHIATRY REHUMANIZED

Frankl MSFM pg 135-6

PSYCHIATRY REHUMANIZED

“For too long a time…psychiatry tried to interpret the human mind merely as a mechanism, and consequently the therapy of mental disease merely in terms of a technique (cb, db, analysis, meds, etc).  I believe this dream has been dreamt out. what now begins to loom on the horizon are not the sketches of a psychologized medicine but rather those of a humanized psychiatry.

A doctor, however, who would still interpret his own role mainly as that of a technician would have to confess that he sees his patient as nothing more than a machine, instead of seeing the human being behind the disease!

A human being is not one thing among others; THINGS DETERMINE EACH OTHER,but man is ultimately self-determining.  WHAT HE BECOMES—WITHIN THE LIMITS OF ENDOWMENT AND ENVIRONMENT—HE HAS MADE OUT OF HIMSELF.  In  the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints.  Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions not on conditions.  (ME: CHOICE:  HUMAN KIND OR HUMANUNKIND).

Our generation must become realistic…we must know man as he really is. After all, man is t hat being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the Lord’s Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips, (or sacrificed his own life/desires to share his little food.