Visionary or Voodoo? - Page 18


Brain and Soul

This peculiar, but almost universal, sleight of thought--"it's not me, it's my brain "--helps explain Amen's appeal and, for that matter, the appeal of all "biological psychiatry." Whether or not we're religious, spiritual seekers, or hard-nosed materialists, we feel intuitively that our real selves, our souls, if you will, aren't the same as the soft "hardware" of the brain. And unlike many drive-thru drug dispensers, as psychiatrists have too often become, Amen actually seems to care about the soul, perhaps even in some way believes he's doing his part to save souls, or at least free them from the malign influence of a sick brain. And clearly, Amen and his staff do everything they can to make the people who come to them feel like real people with basically whole souls, whatever is wrong with their neurophysiology.

Recently, Ted, a nonprofit administrator who'd seen Amen at the Networker Symposium, decided to get his own brain scanned in Amen's clinic in Reston, Virginia, which is directed by psychiatrist Charles Parker. Now in his mid-fifties, Ted says he's been depressed since his late thirties. He describes his emotional state not as sadness so much as apathy, lack of energy, zest, and motivation. "Nothing's wrong in my life. In fact, I think I have a great life. I just don't enjoy it very much," he says. He also has a hard time concentrating and, while he used to read a lot, now just zones out in front of the TV. He was in therapy many years ago, though not since becoming depressed, and has tried a number of medications--Prozac, Wellbutrin, Cymbalta, Paxil--and acupuncture, all to no avail.

Ted loved his whole experience at the Amen clinic. The staff seemed entirely made up of young, attractive, extraordinarily pleasant women with big smiles who, Ted was intrigued to see, all wore very high heels. "It was a little like the Stepford Wives, only they seemed genuinely nice." He filled out a 15-page questionnaire, went through a lengthy interview with the "historian," and then underwent a concentration scan. Two days later, he went in for his resting scan, and a day or two after that, Dr. Parker reviewed the scans with him.

Ted found Dr. Parker to be the nicest person of an amazingly nice staff, scoring about 110 on a 100-point friendliness scale. "The psychiatrist I go to for my meds checks is a nice enough guy, I guess, but he's like an iceberg compared to Dr. Parker, whom I liked much better. He really seemed to want to spend as much time with me as I needed."

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