Psychotropics

“Beginning in the mid-1970s, science replaces sentiments as the principal means by which effective treatment is applied. . . . Gone is any reference to the collaboration or alliance with the patient, the facilitation of psychotherapy, and so on. . . . Stressing the power and potency of psychotropic drugs is accompanied by a change in the psychiatrist’s image of himself, via-a-vis his patient. Earlier advertisements suggested medication increased the potency of the personality of the psychiatrist, his own ability, his therapeutic qualities. During this period there is a dislocation of potency to the drugs themselves, which can then be prescribed by the knowledgeable psychiatrist” (Neill, 337).