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APRIL – MAY 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com NEXUS • 55A fish said to another fish: "Above this sea of ours there is another sea, with creatures swimming in it—and they live there, even as we live here." The fish replied: "Pure fancy! When you know that everything that leaves our sea by even an inch, and stays out of it, dies. What proof have you of other lives in other seas?" — Kahlil Gibran, The Forerunner Most psychiatrists regard mental disorder as caused by a disturbance of brain chemistry, a view strongly supported over recent years by advances in the neu-rosciences. There is also good empirical evidence that psychological stress caninitiate changes in brain chemistry. This has strengthened the development of a bio/psycho/social model of mental disorder, in which genetic and dynamic factors com-bine. Yet the fundamental question of what constitutes 'mind' remains unanswered, formind has no physical substance. The general view is that mind is epiphenomenal , meaning it is secondary to the function of the physical brain. The brain is thought somehow to generate consciousness. This is nota logical proposition, although it sounds reasonable enough. How can something non-physical be created by something entirely physical? Yet it is an everyday assumption in aworld based on the idea of a mechanical, material universe in which the five senses are heldto be the only reliable sources of information. I am going to be arguing against this physicalist view of the world, which started with René Descartes and Isaac Newton 300 years ago. Descartes established the golden rule forempirical science, that nothing would be held to be true unless it could be proved to be true,and Newton laid the foundation of a mechanical universe in which time is absolute andspace is structured according to the laws of motion. From this time, the split between religion and science began to widen. The Church could no longer claim to understand how the universe worked, and the spiritual and physicalworlds drifted apart. During the 19th century, the new science of psychology helped rede-fine the mental world in secular terms. Sigmund Freud (1927) saw religion as a massivedefence against neurosis, and even Carl Jung, despite his own spiritual journey, limited him-self to defining the soul as "the living thing in Man, that which lives of itself and causeslife" (Jung, 1959:26). Psychiatry is set on proving its bona fides as a science equal to any other, and little atten- tion has been paid to spirituality. Yet a survey carried out by the Mental Health Foundation(1997) showed that over 50 per cent of service users hold religious or spiritual beliefs theysee as important in helping them cope with mental illness. They also said they don't feelfree to discuss their beliefs with the psychiatrist. I have found that psychiatrists who pri-vately acknowledge the importance of spirituality often feel reluctant to embark on such talkwith their patients because it is outside of their training in medicine, psychiatry and alsopsychotherapy (Powell, 2001). The impact of the Newtonian world-view has been immense. Our scientific model of the psyche has no place for the soul; there is nothing before birth and nothing after death.Everything has to be understood as arising from within this temporary, physical existence,with the human self the only source of consciousness. We are all separate beings, boundedby the envelopes of our skin and moving around in a fixed, impersonal, three-dimensionaluniverse utterly indifferent to our comings and goings. Little wonder that depression is theailment of the modern world. In the first five years of Prozac's coming onto the market,over 10 million prescriptions were handed out (Kramer, 1994).— Q— Q UANTUMUANTUM PPSYCHIASYCHIA TRTRYY—— WWHEREHERE SSCIENCECIENCE MMEETSEETSSSPIRITPIRIT A 21st century science of mind needs to incorporate the findings of quantum physics and knowledge of non- physical realities into the understanding of mental health and mental illness. by Dr Andrew Powell © 2001 Oxford, England, UK Correspondence: c/- Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK Email: sduncan@rcpsych.ac.uk