From Biomedical to Biopsychosocial: II. A Personal Odyssey

"From Biomedical to Biopsychosocial: I. Being Scientific in the Human Domain" (Engel, 1996) marks the most current formulation of a perspective that began appearing in my publications as early as 1942, and since then has been the focus of some 60 more (see III of this series, pp. 450-452, for a list of pertinent publications, 1942-1946). In that article, I refer to the profound influence on me as a college student of the writings of biologist H.S. Jennings, particularly his insistence that "inner experiences" are proper data for use by the biologist. I was 18 years old at the time. In this essay, I propose to explore what rendered me so receptive to the scientific apostasy of Jennings, and whence I derived my quiet confidence, when I began medicine, that my work with patients at the bedside would be no less scientific than had been my studies of nerve metabolism in the laboratory as a college student (Engel & Gerard, 1935). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)