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The multi-faceted phenomenon known as globalization has a particular impact on the conceptual and practical development of mental health disciplines in general, and psychiatry in particular, across different world regions. To be theoretically and functionally effective, global psychiatry requires an integration of its different components. To such objective, and after a brief review of continental European and Anglo-Saxon contributions, this article examines the history, characteristics, and contributions of Latin/Iberian American and Spanish-speaking psychiatry, in order to substantiate its role in world psychiatry. The Latin American proper (including Portuguese-speaking Brazil), Spain, and U.S.-based Hispanic components are described, revealing an identity that is based on a humanistic tradition, a value-based, culturally-determined clinical approach to patient care, and a pragmatic adaptation of different treatment resources and techniques. These may constitute supportive elements of an instrumental inter-regional bond in the present and future of our discipline.

espanolEn las ultimas decadas varios autores han empleado la metafora “cerebroemocional” para referirse a los fenomenos mentales relacionados con los afectos, lossentimientos o las emociones, lo que incluso se ha popularizado con el concepto de“inteligencia emocional”. Estos intentos de conocer las estructuras cerebrales queintervienen en los fenomenos emocionales se pueden relacionar con distinciones como laque opone el cerebro (o mente) emocional, racional y pulsional. Con ellos se realiza unnuevo intento de establecer categorias en los fenomenos mentales que tiene antecedentesmuy importantes en la filosofia clasica y grandes consecuencias medicas.El problema subyacente de la relacion entre cerebro y mente se plantea tambien enotras muchas disciplinas. Este articulo revisa algunos ejemplos pertenecientes a la historiade la anatomia, las neurociencias, la filosofia, la psicologia o la teoria de la religion, paramostrar la importancia del pensamiento transdisciplinar en la fundamentacion teorica de lamedicina actual. EnglishIn the last decades several authors have used the metaphor "emotional brain" torefer to mental phenomena related to feelings, emotions or affections. A new concept hasarised, "emotional intelligence". These attempts to know the brain structures involved inemotional phenomena can be related to distinctions such as those opposed by theemotional, rational, and instinctual brain (or mind). We can find many other similar attemptsin the classic philosophy always with great medical consequences. The underlying problemof the brain-mind relationship also arises in many other disciplines. This article reviewssome examples, ( from the history of anatomy, neurosciences, philosophy, psychology orthe theory of religion), to show the importance of transdisciplinary thinking in the theoreticalfoundations of modern medicine.

Fernando Lázaro Carreter y el estudio del poema

The history of the concept of delusion can be used to explore the general history of psychiatry in Spain and assess the contribution of her most distinguished practitioners. As this paper shows, the latter have not been as creative as their fellow artists or writers. Nonetheless, the ideas on delusions that some of them formulated deserve attention. The history of Spanish psychiatry (qua science) can be divided into four historical periods. (1) The native origins (up to the end of the eighteenth century). (2) The introduction of European psychiatry (nineteenth century). (3) The period of consolidation (first third of the twentieth century). (4) From the Civil War (1936-39) to the present. These four periods provide a framework within which theories about delusion can be explored. Aspects of these four stages have been dealt with in earlier papers .1

Spain’s most distinguished philosopher of medicine, Pedro Lain Entralgo (1908-2001), believed that philosophical anthropology should be the fundamental basis of any history and theory of medicine, since it could give us a general theory of the human being as a whole, including both the biological and cultural dimensions of human essence; this general anthropology should be both philosophical and medical, multidimensional and systematic, deeply trans-disciplinary. The aim of this contribution is to pose a hypothesis about the double sidedness of human thinking and language, a basic point for any medical-philosophical-anthropology. This hypothesis is based on three classic 19th and 20th Century authors from quite different disciplines: a novelist (Marcel Proust), an anthropologist (J.G. Frazer) and a linguist (Roman Jakobson). From very different points of view, they all present the same basic idea: human thinking and language is the combination of two different processes coming from two different levels of the human mind. The first level, which we shall call ”classical rationality”, allows us to communicate in a clear and distinct way. It is the component of human language that transmits voluntary information. Its ideal models are mathematical and logical language. The second level, which I shall call ”associative rationality”, allows us to introduce the poetical dimension of language, particularly metaphors and metonyms. It is the component of human language that transmits partly involuntary information. Its purer models are dreams, delusions and some expressions of children’s language. The final product of the indivisible activity of both simultaneous processes would be what we call ”human rationality”. If this problematic hypothesis were true, medical philosophy, like any product of human logos, could only be understood as the synthetic result of these two essential components of reason and language.

This paper shows how the community of Latin-American and Spanish psychiatry represents a solid platform for the so-called ‘continental thought’ to meet the analytical Anglo-Saxon thought. It reviews what both Latin America and the Spanish and Portuguese languages represent in the American continent; the relation between Spanish psychiatry and Spanish-speaking psychiatry in America during the twentieth century; the reality of psychiatric research and profession in Latin America; the evolution of Spanish psychiatry in the twentieth century from the post civil war diaspora to the beginning of the twenty-first century, and research on mental health in Spain and the foreseeable future.