The dichotomy between mind and body and its influence on the growing use of psychiatric drugs today
The present work addresses the increasingly accentuated use of medical-pharmacological technology for the treatment of mental disorders. We understand this phenomenon as part of a more comprehensive one called medicalization, which can be described as the growing influence of medical jurisdiction on human life and its sufferings. These, which were once part of the very act of living, have been captured by explanations that consider them because of a disorder located in the body or in specific organs, such as the brain, in the case of mental disorders. In our understanding, the cerebralism to which we refer, disseminated by neuroscientific discourse, can be understood in a view of an analysis of the historical origins of the modern scientific paradigm that gives rise to medicine, as we know it. In this sense, we follow Nietzschean criticisms, regarding modern philosophy and science as heirs to the Socratic-Platonic philosophical tradition and Christianity. Of this inheritance, what matters most to us is the contempt for what is manifested in the body, say affections, desires and multiplicity, valuing the characteristics related to the soul, such as control, reason and unity.