Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior

214 ELKES

compartmentalization and regionalization of chemical

process in the unit cell and in the brain; to have given us tools

for the study of the chemical basis of learning and temporary

connection formation; to have emphasized the dependence

of pharmacological response on its situational and social

setting; to have compelled a hard look at the semantics of

psychiatric diagnosis, description and communication; to

have resuscitated the oldest of old remedies, the placebo

response for careful scrutiny; to have provided potential

methods for the study of language in relation to the functional

state of the brain; and to have encouraged the Biochemist,

Physiologist, Psychologist, Clinician, the Mathematician and

Communication Engineer to join forces at bench levels; is

no mean achievement for a young science. That a chemical

test should carry the imprint of experience, and partake in

its growth, in no way invalidates the study of symbols, and

the rules among symbols, which keep us going, changing,

evolving and human. Thus, though moving cautiously, psy­

chopharmacology is still protesting; yet, in so doing, it is for

the first time, compelling the physical and chemical sciences

to look behaviour in the face, and thus enriching both these

sciences and behavior. If there be discomfiture in this en­

counter, it is hardly surprising; for it is in this discomfiture

that there may well lie the germ of a new science.^30

In our branch of science, it would seem we are attracted to soma as to

symbol; we are as interested in overt behavior as we are aware of the

subtleties of subjective experience. There is here no conflict between

understanding the way things are and the way people are, between the

pursuit of science and the giving of service. It is this rare comprehensive­

ness which is psychopharmacology’s unique gift to medicine and to

psychiatry. The pharmacology without will slowly lead to the pharma­

cology within, an understanding of the nature of healing and self-healing,

putting psychiatry as the science of man and mind at the very heart of

medicine, where it rightfully belongs.