What are key developments in your field?
As I look at things right now, there are two levels of knowledge that are building very, very rapidly and one level is the level that I primarily work in, which is the application of technology of imaging tools to map the mind. How does the human mind focus its attention? How does it remember? How does it experience emotions and so on? And then the other, which is at the level of the molecule or the cell, is the whole contribution that's coming from genetics, genomics, proteomics, and that's the mapping of life at the cellular level. That is just burgeoning, and these two things are happening at the same time very often by people who don't interact with one another. They're really two quite different disciplines with different training and so on, but it's evident to many of us that the power of combining across those levels -- the very fine cellular or molecular level and on the other hand the systems -- the power of doing that is just going to break open tremendous knowledge. We have an exciting century ahead of us.
What are your feelings about drugs and mental illness?
Clearly, there's a lot of important research being done now on the brain and also on drugs, so we can't ignore that. And that's where a lot of the research money is going. But I am very concerned that what we're learning in those areas is being misapplied and being misinterpreted, and basically, I think we're in rough shape. The mental health field, I think, is moving in a very dangerous direction.
How well do psychologists & psychiatrists work together?
I don't think there is a unification. I don't think that the psychologists and psychotherapists and so on -- the non-medical mental health professionals -- I don't think they're working together with the more medically-oriented people all that well. In fact, what I see is this very slow process of domination by medical, biological folks over the more traditional mental health professionals, and I think this is a very dangerous trend. I think it's wrong, I think it's hurting people, and I think it's going to get worse.
