(4) Philosophy and psychopathology Flashcards
What was the Ship of fools (15th)?
exclusionary practice: sending mad people away in ships.
What happened to ‘mad people’ in the 17th century?
17th: The Great Confinement - unreasonable” members systematically locked away and institutionalized.
What happened to ‘mad people’ in the 18th century?
18th: Madness (vs Reason) - having lost what made them human (i.e. reason), they became animal-like and therefore treated as such.
What happened to ‘mad people’ in the 19th century?
19th: madness was regarded as a “curable” mental illness (e.g. Pinel, Freud).
Foucault’s argument: 1.Early Middle Ages
Parallel between the medieval isolation of lepers and the modern isolation of madness
–Both lepers and the mad were objects of fear and repulsion; isolated in houses designed more for separation from society than for cures; used as joint signs of divine justice and mercy; and in some cases, funds and institutions originally meant for lepers came to be used for the mad.
Foucault’s argument: Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance
the mad led an ‘easy wandering life,’ madness having been recognized as part of truth.
Foucault’s argument: Mid-17th Century
The Age of the Great Confinement- exclusion and confinement were distinctive features of the Classical Age’s attitude toward madness
Foucault’s argument:19th century
posits a transition to madness as mental illness - Tuke and Pinel “invented” mental illness
The classical experience of madness: 1st level
1st level: Confinement as an economic policy meant to deal with problems of poverty (e.g. begging and unemployment)
- Getting a large class of idle, potentially disruptive people off the streets and putting them to work in a controlled environment
- Success? a failure - it hid but did not eliminate poverty
The classical experience of madness: 2nd level
2nd level:(Calvin) religious basis for the ethical centrality of work: those confined were not regarded as the neutral objects of unfortunate economic processes, but as moral troublemakers worthy of society’s condemnation and punishment.
-Implicit in the Classical condemnation of “unreasoning” behaviour was a deep restructuring of moral categories mad =animal “madness is assimilated to the broader category of unreason” It is detention rather than treatment of the mad that is characteristically Classical
How was psychiatry founded?
- psychiatry was founded on a false epistemology: illness diagnosed by conduct but treated biologically.
- challenge the core values of a psychiatry which considers mental illness as primarily a biological phenomenon, of no social, intellectual or political significance.
What are the two central contentions of psychiatry?
- The specific definitions of, or criteria for, current psychiatric diagnoses or disorders are vague and arbitrary, leaving too much room for opinions and interpretations to meet basic scientific standards.
- Prevailing psychiatric treatments are ultimately far more damaging than helpful to patients.
Criticisms of psychiatric authority
- inappropriate and overuse of medical concepts and tools to understand the mind and society;
- scientifically and/or clinically ill-founded system of categorical diagnoses (e.g., DSM) & stigmatization
- unexamined abuse or misuse of power over patients who are too often treated against their will;
- compromise of medical and ethical integrity because of psychiatrists’ financial and professional links with pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies.
Wakefield: The concept of mental disorder
- Sexual, racial and sexual orientation biases in diagnosis
2. Psycho diagnosis is often used to control or stigmatize socially undesirable behaviour that is not really disordered
Drapetomania (1851)
- a sickness of the mind that makes you want to run away.
- affects only black people
- does not seem to affect whites
- especially common in the American South in the early 1800s.
