Mental Healers and Their Philosophies*

For many generations now, both in East and West, philosophy and psychiatry have been engaged in the enigmatic relation known to social scientists as “antagonistic cooperation.”† It is no wonder, therefore, that they have recurrently poached on one another's preserves, sought to deny one another's existence, and become so confused as to the rhyme or reason of their connection as to demand total merger one day and irreconcilable divorce the next. Extreme policies of this sort hardly seem likely to reduce current tensions or promote effective peace between the two cultures, which have never been in more desperate need of productive working relationships than they are now. As Durkheim has reminded us, men and societies alike inevitably pay a high price, sometimes even a fatal one, for ignoring or misconstruing the viable forms of collaboration.

A reasonably clear sense of this issue will be achieved by a quick survey of a number of the more characteristic stances adopted by the sibling disciplines in the course of their long history of association.

Psychiatrists ought not to be excessively surprised to learn that philosophy has throughout its history claimed to be of prime therapeutic