The Consolation of Philosophy, Psychology and Magic

The new biological research into genes and brain chemistry offers amazing insights into ourselves. Often, however, there is a disconnect between describing something scientifically and explaining its function.

New findings from biology can be a consolation to parents and young people suffering from psychological illness. For instance, a family with a daughter who has life-threatening anorexia can be soothed somewhat with explanations that the disorder is caused by genes inherited from grandma or brain chemistry gone awry which can be fixed by medications, not by bad mothering or cultural madness.

From another point of view, these new sciences have yet to provide many cures or life-changing understandings of sickness and health. When merged with formerly popular schools of psychology such as psychoanalysis, behaviorism, humanistic psychology, cognitive-developmental theory, etc., recent scientific investigation only adds new overlays of variables. When scientists are pressed to explain how a gene came to be or what impact brain activity in a particular area has, they often lapse into the latest explanatory fashion, evolutionary psychology mumbo jumbo, and make wild speculations likely to be no more accurate than Freudians made seventy years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolation_of_Philosophy