Neuroscience and psychiatry: marriage or coexistence?

Psychiatry, which has experienced the influence of many thrusts in its history, is currently experiencing the impact of neuroscience. Clinicians view the impact with excitement and with apprehension. The author reviews examples of the excitement of scientific developments related to psychiatry. He traces the coexisting evolution of a more differentiated clinical psychiatry and deals with questions of reconciling neuroscience and behavioral approaches. The author's contention is that neuroscience will strengthen psychiatry and that biological and psychological integration will thus be enhanced.