How should we deal with mental disorder - as an
"illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in
living", or what? This book seeks to answer such
questions by going to their roots, in philosophical
questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways
in which it can be understood, and about the nature and
aims of scientific medicine.
The controversy
over the nature of mental disorder and the
appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an
abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very
practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on
psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this
book is that these questions are ultimately
philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if
we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions
about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means
for medicine to be "scientific".
The
"phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century
French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to
question these assumptions. His conception of human
beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more
illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and
the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The
conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders"
are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard
interpretation of the medical model fits some more
readily than others. The core mental disorders, however,
are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the
world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from
"human" rather than straightforwardly "biological"
norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience
the world and especially other people, rather than in
physiological functioning - even though the nature of
our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the
ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is
applied within the book both to issues in clinical
treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions
of psychiatry.
Written by a well known
philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book
should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from
psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists,
philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental
health.
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