Psychiatry and Philosophy in Turkey: Godotian Expectations?

This short article offers a personal view on developments in philosophy and psychiatry in Turkey. I am not a psychiatrist, but as a medical doctor with a philosophy degree and also a medical historian, I have been closely involved with these developments through our unit for Deontology in the Medical Faculty of Ankara University, and through my academic work generally in this country. I will start by setting them briefly in their historical context.

As in other countries, philosophy and psychiatry have developed in Turkey along separate tracks. Modern Turkish philosophy, like many other aspects of life in Turkey, dates from the foundation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his followers in 1923. Already in the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, and parallel to the movement of Westernization in general in that period, we see efforts to follow contemporary philosophical developments in Europe. This was reflected in different aspects of philosophical life, such as publishing, education, and the establishment of learned societies. But it is after 1923 that most of the formative figures in Turkish philosophy appear. From my point of view, particularly noteworthy from this time is Hans Reichenbach, one of the leading representatives of logical empiricism. He came to Turkey as a result of both Nazi persecution and, on the positive side (like many other German-speaking professors), an invitation from the Turkish government. He was very active during his stay in Istanbul (1933-1938), both academically and in the social life of the University. He has been particularly influential on later developments in the philosophy of science in Turkey (Akdogan 1994).

Chronologically, the philosophers of modern Turkey form three successive generations. A major contemporary figure is the present Secretary General of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, Ioanna Kuçuradi, a professor of the third generation (and, ethnically speaking, of Greek origin). She is also chairperson of the Philosophy Department of Hacettepe University in Ankara, and one of the founders and president of the Turkish Philosophical Society. Interestingly, her work reflects the position of Turkey midway between Asia and Europe, especially as seen from abroad—her papers on the development of philosophy in this country have appeared both in a publication devoted to philosophy in Asia and the Pacific (Kuçuradi 1986), and in a book on European philosophy (Kuçuradi 1993). Basically, however, philosophy as an academic activity has been Western in this country, with all its ramifications having been represented. Other publications on the development of different aspects of philosophical activity in Turkey include Cotuksöken (1994), Demirdöven (1994), Denkel (1994), and Kaynardag (1983; 1994).

The history of modern psychiatry in Turkey has been a product of both internal developments and external factors. Since the end of the last century, Turkish psychiatry has been strongly influenced by Kraepelin’s descriptive approach to mental disease. But Freud’s dynamic (and explanatory) conception was introduced to this country by the psychiatrist Professor Rasim Adasal, who began to teach in Ankara Medical Faculty only from 1947 onwards. Not only was he an academic, with contributions in such fields as medical sociology and medical psychology, but, as a very popular figure, he was also the undisputed leader in the popularization of Freud’s psychology in Turkey. This was important in a society in which, like many others to be sure, the prevailing attitude to mental disorders had on the whole been one of unscientific superstition. Today, we observe a diagnosis-oriented rather than a patient-oriented psychiatric practice in Turkey, as is apparently the case in most parts of the world. Paradoxically, though, this appears to be among the determinants of a postmodernist approach to mental disease, a pluralism bringing back in its wake the mental “healers” and other unscientific health practitioners (Oguz 1996).

In psychiatry, then, as in philosophy, there is a hint of Turkey being midway between traditions: West and East, modern and traditional. Of course, the different approaches to modern psychiatric theory and practice on the one hand, and the various schools of thought in contemporary philosophy on the other, are all...