‘Psychiatry’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life

Much of my practice over the years has involved treating individuals with significant disturbances of character. What they need most is to learn self-regulatory skills and self-discipline, but quick-fix medications rob them of the opportunity to make meaningful investments in personal development.

By far the most limiting aspect of traditional approaches to understanding the most character-disturbed individuals among us is that purely behavioral descriptions don’t capture the essence of what is unhealthy and problematic in them.

With the psychiatric side effects of rimonabant (sold as Acomplia in Europe and as Zimulti elsewhere) turning out to be even worse than originally thought, and the effectiveness of this new weight loss drug turning out to be pretty minimal, Sanofi-Aventis has yanked it from the market following a decision by European regulators to suspend marketing approval.

Aggressive personalities are fundamentally at war with anything that stands in the way of their unrestrained pursuit of their desires.

Almost all the principles of traditional psychology are based upon the attempts of various theorists to explain a phenomenon rare for its time and almost totally unheard of in modern times. Character disturbance — not neurosis — is the pressing psychological reality of our day and simply can’t be understood or dealt with using traditional paradigms.