ORGANIC UNITY THEORY - AN INTEGRATIVE MIND-BODY THEORY FOR PSYCHIATRY

The potential of psychiatry as an integrative science has been impeded by an internal schism that derives from the duality of mental and phy sical. Organic unity theory is proposed as a conceptual framework that brings together the terms of the mind-body duality in one coherent pe rspective. Organic unity theory is braided of three strands: identity, which describes the relationship between mentally described events an d corresponding physically described events; continuity, which describ es the linguistic-conceptual system that contains both mental and phys ical terms; and dialectic, which describes the relationship between th e empirical way of knowing that is associated with the physical domain of the linguistic-conceptual system and the hermeneutic way of knowin g that is associated with the mental domain. Each strand represents an integrative formulation that resolves an aspect of mental-physical du alism into an underlying unity. After the theory is presented, its imp lications for psychiatry are briefly considered.