In our secular age psychiatry has become the new religion and the psychiatrist has become the new priest. Psychiatry is mystical in that the lay person can't understand it and in that it claims to be able to explain life to us. In the past a tragedy would bring out priests and ministers. Today such events are plagued with hordes of counselors and therapists. If man is a religious being torn between mysticism and reason, then psychiatry is his attempt to fuse the two.
Psychiatry is a powerful entity in our legal and social system.
It can be used to exonerate those guilty of committing crimes, and it can be used to incarcerate those who have committed no crime. It can persuade judges to grant or deny child custody, etc. In his book The Power of Psychiatry , Jonas Robitscher, who is both a lawyer and a psychiatrist, listed 51 ways that psychiatrists can exert power. And, no doubt, since the book's publication new powers have been granted. But psychiatric power is based on myths.