In his book Who is made of wood ... (Which will be published in the near future in English under the title Not made of wood). Foudraine, a Dutch psychiatrist, describes his 'journey through the psychiatric world': how he was trained to consider people as objects and how he gradually became aware of the fact that psychiatric treatment isn't a treatment of central nervous systems but involves the treatment of relations. The book got overwhelming positive attention of non psychiatrists and a small number of his collegues. In the first part of this essay negative responses from psychiatrists are analyzed. My conclusion is that much criticism must be classified as rationalization rather than as rational discussion of methodology. In the second part the role of positivism in psychiatric approach is discussed: its function is limited. As soon as positivism gets an unlimited authority in psychiatry, relations become authoritarian and anti-therapeutic. In the third part an attempt is made to create a model for psychiatric thinking in which positivism as well as 'relationism' (or fenomenology) have their own 'rights'. The model is of a system-theoretical nature and based on modern biological positivism of the non-reductionistic type: relations between ass well as properties of the elements in the systems created by patients and their environment (including psychiatrists) must be studied.