Trying to understand human nature is a complex task in which many disciplines must cooperate. Difficulties arise from partial findings or different designations to meanings of words. Scientists, philosophers, and theologians are prone to pursue their own speculations, thus disregarding or denying the views of others.

Human beings have been defined as beings who think. Technical advances defy the conception of a sense in life that is superior to the evidence of brain at work. To be and think, or, I think therefore I am, is understood by modern science in a light conception as a product of metabolic interrelationship of neurotransmitters. To be is concealed behind scientific facts [1]. Some authors have written about how the brain is responsible for personality, stressing too much, the undoubtedly important function of the CNS for cognition, communication, and relation to the world [2]. Anthropology is not reducible to a single subject or method of study. Physical, biological, cultural, social, and historical factors show partial sides of a multifaceted reality. Time and place usually change human behavior without modification of its nature, or, precisely because of it.

Anthropology can be defined as the naturalistic description and interpretation of the diverse features of mankind. There is no single method of study, but most anthropologists seek to use direct observation of human beings in their particular society, time, and place. In the nineteenth century, biological evolution was the theory that inspired the idea that primitive social organizations would help to understand mankind because they were thought to be genuine and not yet altered by cultural interferences. That ideological bias made western ways and knowledge suspicious, and the conclusions were forced to be confirmations of the starting prejudice.

Many ethnologists and archaeologists tend to concentrate on small societies assuming that they are original examples of how the total psyche and mentality of mankind began its evolution. Culture, beliefs, ecology, and linguistics are some of the additional characteristics that need to be explored in an attempt to understand the essence of the anthropological subject.

Recent advances in genetics show findings in the complex structure of living creatures. Genotype and phenotype are two concepts that cannot be omitted by investigators, and many new facts are arising from Genomics. The profound significance of the work by Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) was not recognized by scientists until the beginning of twentieth century, and only in these past years of the twenty-first century have his findings evolved to a very important branch of biology. In June of 2000 the world learned of the decodification of the human genome. Worldwide collaboration has concentrated on the Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), a cybernetic site where investigators find the news in real time. New techniques of screening by DeoxiriboNucleic Acid (DNA) micro-arrays will hopefully allow for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of genetic conditions. Single nucleotide polymorphisms show predictive traits of neurological diseases. Heritability of many disorders in psychiatry has been known since the time of Hippocrates, but it is now understood that the gene and its ADN code transmits the protein anomaly, not behaviors. Genotype and phenotype influence each other. The future of genetic investigation in psychiatry should be dedicated to: (a) discovering how much heritability means in the etiology of mental disorders; (b) how this influence is exerted, and (c) how mutations can start pathology and how it can be prevented [3].

Pedro Laín Entralgo [4] has described the different levels of analysis that must be made in relation to the complex reality of mankind: science, philosophy, and theology. The first, and lowest, tries to explain how a human being is made, its anatomy, physiology, even pathology. Philosophers think about what kind of being man is, and what his place and function in the world is, his relations to his fellow men, time, and space. If the object of observation and experience is real, imagined, or ideal it can be the subject of science, but if thought reflects on essence, it will need to extend further than physics: metaphysics. And the difference will be methodical. Theology explains who man is and the sense of life, however, that all depends on belief.

Karl Popper said that the world does not confirm truths, but it refutes mistakes, and, anyway, the world exists and so does truth; the problem is that we are not sure about every detail [5]. “Being conscious of the fallibility of science is what makes the difference between a scientist and a scientificist” [6].

Psychiatrists must keep in mind the importance of this anthropological scope and accept the different methods of seeking the truth. Psychiatry, being a branch of medicine is also praxis, meaning the art of healing illness in an individual subject called a person. One of the best schools of thought up to now has been phenomenology.

Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced by the person point of view. Essential components of mind are intentionality and the meaning of an object or an experience. It basically defines the structure of the various types of experience ranging from perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, volition, body awareness, social and linguistic activities; and what they mean, because meaning explains intentionality.

This particular branch of philosophy offers a theory of human subjectivity indispensable to understand, explore and treat psychiatric disorders, and there has been a “mutual enlightment” with cognitive neuroscience. By analyzing the modes in which our experience is constituted, phenomenology is capable of detecting the critical points where this comprehension is vulnerable, mistaken and open to deviations that appear as psychiatric symptoms.

Additional fertile ground is in pathology. Many discoveries occurred from observation of functional losses after injury, and paved the way for treatment of disabilities. Again, Pedro Laín Entralgo points out how much illnesses can teach about human beings. He looks back into the history of medicine and how illnesses were studied and treated in the successive ages and concludes that pathology was basic in how man was understood, and proposes to speak of Pathologic Anthropology [4]. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, delusions, obsessions, and neurosis are human ailments, and suffering can push men to limits against the normal and healthy wish to live, such as suicide.

Phenomenologists, for example Viktor von Gebsattel [7], characterize psychology as being necessarily personal and objective-oriented. When disorders alter normal freedom, people lose their sense of life and the disability modifies their “being in the world”. Profound thinking about the meaning of a relationship with another person and the way to seek transcendence guides psychiatric art in its motivation to heal is necessary.

The reflection of philosophers and doctors about man, has necessarily confronted the mystery of body and spirit. Science and its methods cannot find an explanation for human beings. Psychiatry is the branch of medicine dedicated to the study and treatment of disorders in this crossroads. Medical anthropology received attention and awareness many years ago when Ludolf von Krehl, Viktor von Weizsäcker, Karl Jaspers, Max Scheler, and many more, had the opportunity to meet, think, and speak in the towns of Halle, Heidelberg and Freiburg. They integrated the new psychological dimension that had begun with psychoanalysis, and all the advances that technology was adding to physiology and human relationships with their fellow men. Psychosomatic medicine is one concept still in use, but it also means an unacceptable division of the integrity of human beings [8].