Introduction
After World War II, mental health turned toward psychopharmacology, the use of medications to treat psychiatric illnesses, as its mainstay. The success of medications led some to insist that all mental illness is due to the inheritance of abnormal genes and that life’s experiences play a diminished role. This alienated many who believe that psychotherapy is also an effective way of treating these disorders and led to a mistrust of neuroscience research. Some insisted that neuroscience ignores the human “mind.” In fact, neuroscience research in the past 50 years has clearly shown that adverse life experiences have profound effects on brain function and are involved in every psychiatric illness. By accepting this view of neuroscience, we can also accept the idea that the “mind” is in reality the work of the physical brain.