The Diminished Resistance to Medicalization in Psychiatry: Psychoanalysis Meets the Medical Model of Mental Illness

In this paper, I use data from 20 in-depth interviews with psychoanalytically trained psychiatrists (who prescribe medications and practice talk therapy) about their experiences navigating treatment in a profession dominated by the medical model. Psychiatrists’ descriptions of their field and their patients’ troubles support the central claims in sociology about the medicalization of psychiatry. Since the 1980s, the extent to which psychiatric troubles are medicalized has increased dramatically and in new ways. Pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and consumers drive the current era in medicalization. Psychiatric training is also highly influential on practitioners’ propensities to think and act medically. Qualitative data are crucial for understanding the extent to which medicalization influences practitioners and the degree to which they foster the use of medical interventions. Very few researchers have examined the medicalization of psychiatry from the perspective of psychiatrists, especially psychoanalysts, who offer insight into why medicalization is largely unchallenged within psychiatry.