Psychiatrists have contributed more than academic psychologists to psychological understanding. However, the irreducible specificity of psychic causality is often not recognized by physicians, who are neither systematically trained to understand nor to treat psychic illness. Moreover, psychic causality disturbs our way of thinking, which is more comfortable with physiological and sociological causality.
Psychic causality consists of the determining influence of 'imaginary' representations, inscribed in the psyche during a long very personal history, and distorting the representations of the other, the relationships, the affective body-scheme and so on. Psychotherapy works with all present existential dimensions, e.g., work, relationships, body-perception. Therefore the entire organization of a psychiatric institute is therapeutic or counter-therapeutic. The different therapeutic techniques (conditioning, Gestalt-therapy, psycho-analytically orientated therapy, psycho-analysis)Summaries are methods of working on the unconscious representations and one should chose the one that is indicated for the specific case. All therapists should know the principles of these methods, but the therapy should be performed by a specialist in the specific method. Clinical tests are experiments made by the patients: the tests reveal the deep psychological structure with its distortions, and the possibilities to be evolved in therapy. A thouroughgoing analysis of clinical test-protocols gives an indispensable insight. But often neither the psychiatrist, nor the psychologist has sufficient formation to interpret the test protocols. There is still a tendency to take more seriously the physiological body than the laws and processes of the human psyche.