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Astrachan and coworkers (Astrahan, Levinson, and Adla, 1976) have stated that there are four functions of psychiatry, namely the medical function of diagnosis and cure, the restorative function of rehabilitation, the social control function of correcting deviance, and the humanistic function of personal growth. Few would disagree with the fact that most often psychiatry is conceptualized in that order of priorities. The first two functions are what concern most psychiatrists and what most of the psychiatric literature is all about. Because it is not our problem at all—at least that is what we would like to believe—the third function is not one to be discussed at length, except when it comes to our adversaries (psychiatry in the Cold War Soviet Union, for example). The fourth is the humanist or personal growth function, the old “know thyself” dictum. This book is about the fourth function and it has strong implications for the third.
The third part of the title, What Constitutes the patient in psychotherapy, squarely places the issue raised by the book in the so-called postmodern arena, that radically questions traditional western thought, which has failed to solve the human dilemma. The question of what constitutes the patient would have been absurd to most people of my generation as we were residents; unfortunately, that is still the case for many psychiatrists. At Bellevue years ago, there was an attending who, being a strong advocate of the first Astrachanian function, and