The spiritual path of the scholar: portrait of the psychiatrist D.E. Melekhov
Here presents a biography of the outstanding Russian psychiatrist Professor D.E. Melekhov (1899-1979). Special attention is paid to the spiritual Christian aspects in path of life. D.E. Melekhov came from a family of a priest, since childhood, he was a man of the Church. In terms of religious persecution of the Soviet era he found a way to keep the atmosphere of the Christian living, and in his younger years was subjected to various kinds of sanctions. He was close with remarkable, different renowned hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. After graduating from medical faculty of Moscow University, D.E. Melekhov has devoted his entire professional life in psychiatry, and became the founder of the social psychiatry in our country. Everyone who met with D.E. Melehov, noted his high, truly human mental properties. There is no doubt that these features of the scientist's personality were an expression of his Christian worldview, his faith, which was embodied in the form of a unique scientific work - book (alas, incomplete) "Psychiatry and problems of spiritual life". In Soviet times it existed only in "samizdat" form. Its outdoor life started with the 90-ies of the last century. The article discusses the major provisions of this book. Its core is trichotomy concept of personality. This concept, taken by D.E. Melehov of Christian anthropology and first introduced in the domestic psychiatry, it naturally connects with the clinical psychiatric phenomenology has become one of the methodological foundations of the clinical approach that makes the most correct and meaningful to overcome the psychologizing and sociological, to solve such eternally topical and sensitive issues as "creativity and mental pathology", "psychiatry and dissent", the mechanisms of psychotherapeutic influence of faith. From the standpoint of a psychiatrist discusses the theory of personality, religious experience, concepts of disease and health, compares the attitude of the psychiatrist and physician to the manifestations of mental disorders. Approaches to most difficult for all the "Sciences of man" the issue of the relationship of the spiritual and emotional D.E. Melekhov demonstrates, analyzing the way of life (especially creativity and mental pathology) N.V. Gogol and F.M. Dostoevsky. Aphoristic conclusion of this Chapter: "the Genius, of course, not a disease. But the disease of genius is a fact of great artistic and spiritual significance.". In conclusion, the article author talks about the role that book written by D.E. Melekhov is played in his life.