Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Mind-Body Problem Explained: The Biocognitive Model For Psychiatry
    Unavailable
    The Mind-Body Problem Explained: The Biocognitive Model For Psychiatry
    Unavailable
    The Mind-Body Problem Explained: The Biocognitive Model For Psychiatry
    Ebook647 pages9 hours

    The Mind-Body Problem Explained: The Biocognitive Model For Psychiatry

    By Niall McLaren

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Cracking the Mind-Body Cipher
    Dr. Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who uses philosophical analysis to show that modern psychiatry has no scientific basis. This startling conclusion dovetails neatly with the growing evidence that psychiatric drug treatment is crude and damaging. Needless to say, this message is not popular with mainstream psychiatrists. However, in this book, he shows how the principles of information processing give a formal theory of mind that generates a model of mental disorder as a psychological phenomenon.

    This book shows...

  • How, for ideological reasons, modern philosophy misses the point of the duality of mind and body;
  • How to resolve the mind-body problem using well-defined principles;
  • Why the entire DSM project is doomed to fail;
  • Why the ideas of Thomas Szasz have failed to influence psychiatry;
  • Where we go from here.

    "The Mind Body Problem Explained is a thoughtful, insightful and provocative exploration of the nature of the human mind, and sets forth a powerful argument for rethinking the medical model of mental disorders. The current paradigm of psychiatric care has failed us, and Niall McLaren's book will stir readers to think of new possibilities."
    --Robert B. Whitaker, author Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

    "It is impossible to do justice to this ambitious, erudite, and intrepid attempt to dictate to psychiatry a new, 'scientifically-correct' model theory. The author offers a devastating critique of the shortcomings and pretensions of psychiatry, not least its all-pervasive, jargon-camouflaged nescience."
    --Sam Vaknin, PhD, author Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited

    From Future Psychiatry Press www.FuturePsychiatry.com

    MED105000 Medical : Psychiatry - General
    PHI026000 Philosophy : Criticism
    PSY018000 Psychology : Mental Illness
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFuture Psychiatry Press
    Release dateNov 1, 2012
    ISBN9781615991723
    Unavailable
    The Mind-Body Problem Explained: The Biocognitive Model For Psychiatry
    Author

    Niall McLaren

    Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist with long experience in remote area psychiatry in the far north of the country. He graduated in psychiatry in Western Australia in 1977 and, while working in the state prison psychiatric service, began training in philosophy. He was interested in finding the correct theoretical basis for a "scientific" theory for psychotherapy. This has led him to the conclusion that modern psychiatry fails as science because it has no agreed model of mental disorder. To fill the theoretical gap, he has developed a dualist model of mind, based in the the work of the mathematicians Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. This work, now known as the biocognitive theory of mind, produced a general theory of mind for psychiatry. It generates a formal model of mental disorder as a primary psychological disturbance in a healthy brain, and predicts that mental disorder is not due to "chemical imbalances of the brain." It challenges orthodox psychiatry on many points but is emphatically not a new sort of "antipsychiatry" Learn more about Niall McLaren, M.D. at www.FuturePsychiatry.com

    Read more from Niall Mc Laren

    Related to The Mind-Body Problem Explained

    Related ebooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Steven Pinker Has His Reasons

      Nov 17, 2021

      A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His spouse, the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, with whom he was tagging along, had been invited onto a panel to discuss th

      19 min read

    • Article

      All In The Mind

      Sep 5, 2022

      All In The Mind
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Pursuit Of Happiness

      Feb 25, 2021

      The Pursuit Of Happiness
      13 min read

    • Article

      Would You Survive a Merger with AI?

      Oct 3, 2019

      The idea that humans should merge with AI is very much in the air these days. It is offered both as a way for humans to avoid being outmoded by AI in the workplace, and as a path to superintelligence and immortality. For instance, Elon Musk recently

      9 min read

    • Article

      Distraction Rules

      Mar 1, 2023

      Distraction Rules
      5 min read

    • Article

      Changing Your Mind

      Oct 2, 2022

      Changing Your Mind
      6 min read

    • Article

      BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

      Aug 13, 2020

      The Psychology of Boredom James Danckert and John D. Eastwood Harvard University Press A plethora of books that attempt to rehabilitate boredom as a normal, even valuable, experience have found their way to the Mindful offices in recent years. The be

      4 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Fret, Neurotics – There Are Advantages To Worrying

      Jul 16, 2023

      I cannot remember a time when some large worry has not cast a shadow over my day. As a young child, I would lie awake fearing everything from the impending embarrassment of gym class, to the death of my parents, to the prospect of a nuclear holocaust

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Wisdom of the Aging Brain: Tantalizing evidence suggests that brain activity shifts to increase wisdom as we age.

      May 12, 2016

      At the 2010 Cannes Film Festival premiere of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, director Woody Allen was asked about aging. He replied with his characteristic, straight-faced pessimism. “I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage in getting older

      10 min read

    • Article

      Student Edition

      Sep 30, 2017

      WITH EMMA LAW RANCE HOMETOWN: Adelaide CURRENTLY LIVING: Oxford RESEARCH: Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience “The first project for my PhD explored how we make decisions when we are missing information, and how this uncertainty influences our c

      8 min read

    • Article

      Bookmark This

      Apr 27, 2021

      How the Body and the Mind Experience and Endure Physical Suffering Abdul-Ghaaliq Lalkhen, MD • Scribner Anyone whose doctor ever asked them to describe pain on a scale from 1 to 10 knows just how hazy our understanding of pain is. There is perhaps no

      4 min read

    • Article

      Yes, Determinists, There Is Free Will

      May 16, 2019

      It’s not just in politics where otherwise smart people consistently talk past one another. People debating whether humans have free will also have this tendency. Neuroscientist and free-will skeptic Sam Harris has dueled philosopher and free-will def

      10 min read

    • Article

      Does Depression Have an Evolutionary Purpose?

      Feb 9, 2017

      I had a tough time in high school. Like many other young adolescents, I saw myself as fundamentally flawed, and felt a searing isolation. Nothing I looked forward to brought any hope. I stopped getting out of bed. I cut myself. I drafted a suicide no

      12 min read

    Reviews for The Mind-Body Problem Explained

    5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Humanizing Psychiatry: The Biocognitive ModelAuthor: Niall McLaren, M.D.Publisher: Future Psychiatry PressISBN: 978-1-61599-011-5Psychiatry has been around for a long time; in fact, conventional methodologies, systems and beliefs haven't changed that much since their inception. Battered now from all sides, the debate centers on the reliance on pharmaceutical drugs as the cure-all of any real and imagined psychiatric difficulties.We read magazine articles touting the latest "discovery" of mental disorder , an almost "flavor of the month" mindset seems to prevail in our society, We study the tv shows, advertising and media articles asking ourselves if we have these symptoms, and writing down the name of this or that drug, all but guaranteed to quickly and painlessly cure us. Of course, some of the listed side effects are frightening, but we forge ahead for the miracle cure. These pills are going to change and repair our chemical imbalance. As McLaren states, it usually is not that easy. There are several schools of thought, with science demanding that all aspects of a patient's life experiences, family history, brain function and proven theory and practice be examined. In a society and field of science that is looking more and more to the "quick fix", the actual science of psychiatry is too often ignored. Part I of this work explains the scope of biology psychiatry and it's restrictions by taking a very indepth look at the well known and often cited works of Eric Kandel. Basically, Kandel presented the argument that there is no limit to the capacity of biology to explain human behavior. In other words, nothing is beyond our perception, if we merely take a "wait and see" attitude, eventually the answers will become obvious. Of course, that's not taking into account all the false answers that may come our way in the meantime. Also discussed in great detail is the work of mathmetician and logician Alan Turing, most popularly referred to as the "Turing Machine". Turing believed that all human thought processing and problem solving could essentially be reduced to a single set of thought processes; thereby placing this set of processes as commands into a machine (computer) would show that the machine is capable of human thoughts, processing and reasoning. Given these beliefs, the goal of biological psychiatry is to remove psychiological cause from the concept of mental disorder. What about science and the ever-growing psychiatric publishing industry? Publications can be both educational and correct flawed popular but outdated and incorrect theories and thinking. Unfortunately, there is no agreement or idea of what constitues the proper model of mental disorder. The actual objectivity of these many popular articles, magazines and "self help" psychiatric books tend to lean most heavily toward the reductionist theory illustrated by Kandel and Turing. Rarely is alternative theory or criticism written or published. Accountability on the part of publishers, editors, authors is pretty much nonexistent, with no knowledge of the background and basis for publishing specific theory.Part II is Resolving the Mind-Body Problem for Psychiatry. It illustrates the author's belief in the science as it pertains to mentalist control of human behavior, the possibility of molecular resolution of the mind-body problem, embodied logic, the biocognitive model, language as a test of the biological model, and human nature.In Part III of this work, Niall McLaren M.D. applies the biocognitive model of psychiatry, the role of personality and numerous fascinating case studies; and includes the most interesting to this reader, the Circus Vitosus, or vicious circle of the biocognitive model of psychiatry.In conclusion, regardless of a reader's personal view of biocognitive modeling in psychiatry, McLaren has prepared a fascinating and timely study of the fallacies or facts of the science and where it is headed. While the book is written at a level that may be difficult for some lay persons to comprehend, McLaren has taken extreme care in presenting a work with both thought provoking and groundbreaking opinion. I found it well written, indepth and a fascinating look at the field in our world today.