Are Psychiatrists Qualified to Be Psychotherapists?

A few years after going into my private practice, I asked my former and current clients what they found most gainful about our work together. Some of them, you can read up in the "What They Say" section of this blog.

I expected them to describe mental or emotional insights and discoveries. Or, a few things about the wounds healed from their childhood. But all of them got personal to me, saying in effect, "Doc, you were so understanding and cared much about me so I recovered."


Psychotherapy comes from the two Greek words: "therapeutikos" and "psyche." "Therapeutikos" means one who takes care or serves another, while "psyche" means soul or being. Based on these original meanings, psychotherapy means ministering to the soul or being of another.

Psychiatry has medicalized psychotherapy. And as a result, it has corrupted the meaning and essence of psychotherapy by ascribing a foreign meaning to it - the "treatment of mental illness."

Psychiatry is the only branch of medicine that prescribes drugs without objective, clinical basis. Sadly, as Dr. Matthew Dumont put it:  "In bed together at the market: psychiatry and pharmaceutical industry."

Substantial research and statistics show that drug-dependent psychiatry seldom heals wounded thoughts and emotions. In fact, it often kills any chance of significant, permanent improvement on the soul and wellbeing of a hurt person.

Dr. Peter Breggin, in his book "Toxic Psychiatry," writes:

"Psychotherapists are a very broad group which includes helping people with problems by talking with them ... Not all psychiatrists are Psychotherapists or 'talking doctors' ... Many psychiatrists have little or no training in how to communicate with people about their problems. Instead they're trained in making 'medical diagnoses and giving drugs and electroshock.' "




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