Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:22:02.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Psychiatrist in Search of a Science

I: Early Thinkers at the Maudsley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Eliot Slater*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, S.E.5

Extract

Until quite recently the prestige of Science was enormous, and in its glow basked innumerable earnest workers who firmly believed that their meticulous ant-like activities were advancing the health, wealth, welfare and spiritual ascent of man. In the last few years that prestige has quite suddenly collapsed. We do not deny the loftiness of aim which inspired our forerunners, but we have begun to realize that the secondary consequences of the most nobly motivated activities may lead to disaster. The main consequence of the advance of scientific knowledge has been the proliferation of technologies which have armed and powered a materialistic culture in the exploitation and progressive erosion of a fragile living environment. The scientist of an earlier generation had some notion of seeking after an aspect of the truth, and relied in the main on his own insights and ingenuity. Today, all too often, he knows himself for an expendable member of a professional team, depending on the routine deployment of technical resources for the manipulation of an established paradigm.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1972 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Golla, F. (1938). ‘The Eighteenth Maudsley lecture: science and psychiatry.’ Journal of Mental Science, 84, 420.Google Scholar
Gregory, Richard (1971). ‘Views.’ The Listener, 86, 359–62 (16 Sept.).Google Scholar
Mapother, E. (1934). ‘Tough or tender. A plea for nominalism in psychiatry.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 27, 16871712.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Neil, W. M. (1969). Fact and Theory. An Aspect of the Philosophy of Science. Sydney University Press.Google Scholar
Passmore, John (1968). A Hundred Tears of Philosophy. Harmondsworth, Mddx: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Popper, Karl R. (1969, first published 1963). Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Third edition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.