Spirituality Studies 10-1 Spring 2024 49 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos case), but this does not disprove the lack of remedial efficacy in mainstream psychotherapy and psychiatry. Trauma has been identified as key to many mental health diagnoses, so it is unsettling that – after over one hundred years of modern therapies – “there is no established single drug or psychotherapy treatment that gets to the root cause of trauma” (Sessa 2017, 742). The modern Western “medical model” fails to support mental health treatment that is fully integrated spiritually. This is because it remains plagued by Cartesian bifurcation, which perpetuates the separation of mind and body by neglecting both what transcends and unites them. Another blind spot is its erroneous foundation in behaviorism and psychoanalysis – all subsequent therapeutic modalities are grounded on this desacralized bedrock (Bendeck Sotillos 2021, 18–37). Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966) made some pointed criticism of the fragmented mentality that undergirds modern Western psychology, observing that the chief culprit was a doctrinal “cancer” inherent in a “subject-object cleavage of the world” (quoted in May et al. 1958, 11). A key figure responsible for this pervasive dichotomy in modern science was René Descartes (1596–1650), who advocated a form of mind-body dualism that continues to have an enduring influence on the development of modernity’s Weltanschauung. Descartes appeared to have foreseen the future of modern science, including its psychology, seeing as current mental health practices push, for the most part, treatments that are solely confined to empirically validated techniques. The Cartesian divide between res extensa (Lat. “extended entity”) and res cogitans (Lat. “thinking entity”) makes no allowance for overcoming this partition, thus reducing all human experience to a private, subjective realm bereft of objective reality. This corrosive dualism lives on in modern science, especially in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, where its persistent influence is deeply embedded in their epistemological frameworks. It is especially to be found in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, which severs the psychological (Gr. psyche) from the biological (Gr. soma). The Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing (1927–1989) acknowledged how widespread this medical model is, calling it the “set of procedures in which all doctors are trained” (2001, 39). It thus remains the dominant schema within these disciplines. Its thoroughly reductionist outlook views mental disorders as solely the product of physiological factors and treats them, accordingly, as physical diseases; it generally divorces itself from broader psychological and transpersonal realities, instead becoming wholly fixed on a disease’s etiology (Elkins 2009, 66–84). Grof (1985, 51) speaks to the wholescale overhaul that is needed in order to break the spell of narrow-minded scientistic beliefs: Scientific thinking in contemporary medicine, psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology represents a direct expression of the seventeenth century Newtonian-Cartesian model of the universe. Since all the basic assumptions of this way of viewing reality have been [note: seriously undermined and discredited], it seems only natural to expect profound changes sooner or later in all the disciplines that are its direct derivatives. This is not a “gap” in our knowledge about these matters but, rather, a hegemonic conceptual dominance within the discipline that has determined how mental health treatment in the West is understood. In response to concerns with this exceedingly narrow outlook, the biopsychosocial model emerged to encompass more dimensions of human reality, such as the social and cultural, with a view to gaining a fuller understanding of illness and health. It was George L. Engel (1913–1999) who popularized this approach after having observed a crisis that he attributed to an “adherence to a model of disease no longer adequate for the scientific tasks and social responsibilities of either medicine or psychiatry” (1977, 129). In this attempt to overcome mind-body dualism, he asserted that the following levels all need to be taken into account: “the social, psychological, and biological” (1977, 133). The pioneering work of influential psychiatrist Adolf Meyer (1866–1950), and of American psychiatrist and neurologist Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993), contributed to the further development of the biopsychosocial model first established by Engel. With the limitations of the medical model having been recognized, the biopsychosocial standard was soon found to have its own limitations because it could not adequately explain the various factors that determine psychopathology (Ghaemi 2009a, 3–4; 2009b). Even though it was more inclusive than its predecessor, it still fell short in failing to situate the spiritual dimension at the heart of the human condition. Some have advocated for a biopsychosocial model that embraces spirituality and, while this is certainly more satisfactory, its assumptions are still ad hoc and not
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