“Witch Hunting”: A Form of Reductionistic Thinking

The quest to understand the roots of emotional illnesses has been of central importance in the field of psychiatry. Multiple investigations have raised stimulating questions, exposed new avenues of study, and underscored the complexities inherent in the examination of psychopathogenesis. Judd Marmor (1983) has pointed out that in our efforts to understand the etiology of human psychopathology, our appreciation can be grossly distorted and lead to fallacious conclusions if a reductionistic set of premises too heavily guides our thinking. He noted that in using these reductionistic approaches people “all share a tendency to think of causation in linear, unifactorial terms, rather than in terms of the complex pluralistic, multifactorial dynamics that are involved in all human psycho-pathology” (p. 835).

Despite an increasing awareness of the complexities of human development and psychic functioning, in large sectors of our clinical literature a form of reductionistic thinking still seems to prevail. It appears that although our theoretical understanding is in keeping with a scientific model related to field theory and systems theory, our daily clinical emphasis reflects an earlier and more simplistic model based on stimulus-response paradigms. In this paper I aim to underscore and clarify this disparity in our thinking. To this end, I plan to focus on the dyadic relationship and to first cite some examples from our literature wherein a reductionistic mode of conceptualization is prominent. I call this mode of thinking “witch hunting.” In contrast, I will then note some examples of a more complex interactional appreciation of the nature of the dyadic relationship. Speculations are then put forth as to why a disparity exists between our more comprehensive theoretical understanding of human interaction and the reductionistic model that is often used in the clinical setting:1