Preliminary note
This text addresses systemic assumptions within psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. It does not concern the individual choices, intentions, or competencies of professionals working within these fields.

Why are conversations between psychology/psychiatry and neurobiology so often complicated? This becomes clearer when we first look at what these disciplines aim to do and the assumptions from which they operate.

Psychology

Psychology studies behavior, cognition, and subjective experience. Its point of departure is how people interpret what they think and feel, how they communicate this to others, and how this is expressed in behavior. “Normal” functioning is not biologically defined, but derived from theories of adaptive behavior, coping, and psychological well-being.

The goal is to help people adapt better, function more effectively, and relate to themselves and their environment. Insight, meaning-making, and behavioral change are central.

Scientific research in psychology focuses on identifying relationships and effects. This is done through experiments, questionnaires, interviews, observations, and self-report measures. Results describe statistical associations between variables within research populations. Explanations, however, remain dependent on the chosen theoretical framework. The scientific rigor lies in methodology and statistical substantiation, not in direct access to the underlying biological organization.

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty concerned with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders. This requires a distinction between healthy and ill, functional and dysfunctional. That norm, however, is not biologically established. Classification systems such as the DSM are descriptive and based on symptom clusters, functioning, and the experience of suffering. Deviation is determined through consensus and societal criteria, not through a defined standard of neurobiological functioning.

The primary aim is the classification and treatment of mental disorders. Stabilization and symptom reduction are key outcomes.

Scientific research in psychiatry focuses mainly on the reliability of diagnostic classifications and the effectiveness of treatments. Diagnoses are examined for consistency between professionals and for their predictive value regarding treatment outcomes. Scientific effort here is primarily directed toward usability and applicability within healthcare systems, rather than toward explaining underlying mechanisms.

Neurobiology / Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the umbrella term for research into the entire nervous system. In this text, the term neurobiology is used when referring to the actual organization and functioning that drives behavior and experience. Neurobiology studies the organization and functional operation of the nervous system: the brain, the central nervous system, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nerves. Its starting point is the physical and functional organization of the brain. Thinking, feeling, and behavior follow from that organization.

Functioning is not defined here as desirable or undesirable, but as how neural systems actually function and respond. Safety is the organizing principle, as the brain is primarily oriented toward detecting and maintaining it. In this framework, deviation refers to responses to unsafety that lead to variation in organization, integration, and response. This is not approached as disorder in a normative sense.

Neurobiology does not aim at symptom reduction or restoration to a norm. It describes how humans actually function: how the brain and nervous system organize and adapt. From this understanding, it becomes visible how reorganization and integration (healing) can occur, given the existing organization.

Scientific research in neurobiology focuses on mechanisms. Methods include imaging techniques (such as fMRI and MRI, DTI and PET), electrophysiological measures (such as EEG and MEG), autonomic measures such as heart rate variability and skin conductance, as well as neurochemical and anatomical research. Scientific validity here lies in registration, reproducibility, and the direct relationship between measurement and function. Interpretation follows measurement, not the other way around.

Conflicting Facts

A number of core neurobiological facts conflict with common assumptions in psychology and psychiatry. Naming these facts often evokes resistance.

• Behavior, experience, and thinking follow from the organization of the brain, not from willpower or insight.

• Under threat, brain organization shifts toward survival; higher functions become less accessible or unavailable.

• Trauma refers to a lack of integration between brain networks, limiting presence, reflection, and learning.

• Dissociation is not a symptom, but a way in which the brain organizes itself to prevent overwhelm.

• Cognition and meaning only have influence when sufficient integration is present.

Apples and Oranges

What repeatedly goes wrong in discussions is that different types of statements are treated as equivalent. Everything is read as interpretation, opinion, or perspective, because that is what we are accustomed to. Within psychology and psychiatry, this is logical: experience, meaning, and interpretation are central. What someone feels, experiences, or understands is treated as truth. Within that frame, there is room for difference, nuance, and multiple truths.

But individual truth does not arise in isolation. It is made possible by an organizing system that is not individual, but has evolved over millions of years. The neurobiological organization that produces individual experience, thinking, and behavior is, at its core, a shared mechanism. The output is personal. The organization is not.

Conversations break down when this distinction is not recognized or acknowledged. When the biological system that determines experience is interpreted as if it were itself an interpretation or opinion, the shared reference point disappears. At that point, anything becomes possible and conceptual chaos follows.

Integrating Psychology/Psychiatry and Neurobiology

In standard healthcare education, neurobiology is not taught as a foundational framework. Neuroscience is mentioned, but mainly to illustrate processes, not as a basis for understanding behavior, experience, and functioning. Professionals are trained to work with behavior, experience, and meaning, without education in the neurobiological organization from which these arise. As a result, interpretation remains dominant, while direct registration of how the brain functions is scarcely incorporated.

This makes conversations between professionals from different disciplines difficult. Because psychology and especially psychiatry are organized in a normative way, neurobiological facts are often treated as interpretations—as viewpoints one can agree or disagree with. This is problematic, because neurobiology does not replace psychology; it changes its foundational assumptions. For psychiatry, the implications are even greater, as the illness and disorder framework comes under pressure when functioning is primarily understood through neurobiological organization rather than deviation from a norm or pathology. It is not logically consistent to assume that nature, which has existed for so long, would display such widespread and structural dysfunction.

For this reason, it remains necessary to keep emphasizing the importance of factual functioning. With the shared goal of making care more logical, more humane, and more effective—in service of people, not systems.