Dr. Erwin W. Straus² to bring philosophers and psychiatrists together to attempt (1) to come to grips with the various questions which touch on the applicability of the phenomenological method to psychiatry and (2) to explore the theoretical foundations of psychiatry as a science. Both of these aims appear to many of our contemporaries in psychiatry and philosophy, as they did to a former colleague of mine who happens to be a psychologist and, more than a psychologist, a behavioristic psychologist of the strict observance, as quixotic. When, a few years ago I was instrumental in organizing a symposium involving philosophers and psychiatrists (on what we called "Existentialism, Phenomenology and the Human Sciences") he took the occasion to write a letter to the Provost of our College at the time vigorously protesting the use of College money and the College name in support of such an anarchistic gathering — which, since it was to be open to young students, might do incalculable harm to their unformed minds and perhaps lead them astray. His protest culminated in the observation that: there are no such things as the human sciences, and, if there are, psychiatry is not one of them." /> Phenomenology and psychiatry - Edie James M | sdvig press