Further to discussions of psychology.
Maybe one of the essential errors made by psychiatry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and before is that a perceived mental or behavioural malfunction had to have a biological or chemical cause. This is self-evidently false.
It is more complicated than this. The error seems to be social as much as scientific, and I recommend the works of Szasz for enlightenment on the history of this area.
No behaviour or misbehaviour can in and of itself be an illness or disease.
"Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) revised the whole concept of dementia praecox. He introduced the term "schizophrenia" to denote a group of psychotic reactions, rather than a straightforward type of disease, and distinguished between a number of different kinds of schizophrenic disorder. His monograph, La schizophre'nie, published in 1911, is still a classic in psychiatric literature. ...."
p.203, "The Pelican History of Psychology", Robert Thompson, 1968.
If the instigator of the entity "schizophrenia" did not think of it as a "straightforward type of disease" then how has it come to be seen by some as a distinct disease?
It is now 2007. I hope we have the confidence to say that this monograph is no longer "a classic".
Unless it is as a classic in fantasy.
"In using the term schizophrenia, I am not referring to any condition that I suppose to be mental rather than physical, or to an illness, like pneumonia, but to a label that some people pin on other people under certain social circumstances."
R.D. Laing in "The Politics of Experience", 1967.
----
Catatonia, paranoia.... all of these are descriptions rather than illnesses.
.....
Maybe one of the essential errors made by psychiatry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and before is that a perceived mental or behavioural malfunction had to have a biological or chemical cause. This is self-evidently false.
It is more complicated than this. The error seems to be social as much as scientific, and I recommend the works of Szasz for enlightenment on the history of this area.
No behaviour or misbehaviour can in and of itself be an illness or disease.
"Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) revised the whole concept of dementia praecox. He introduced the term "schizophrenia" to denote a group of psychotic reactions, rather than a straightforward type of disease, and distinguished between a number of different kinds of schizophrenic disorder. His monograph, La schizophre'nie, published in 1911, is still a classic in psychiatric literature. ...."
p.203, "The Pelican History of Psychology", Robert Thompson, 1968.
If the instigator of the entity "schizophrenia" did not think of it as a "straightforward type of disease" then how has it come to be seen by some as a distinct disease?
It is now 2007. I hope we have the confidence to say that this monograph is no longer "a classic".
Unless it is as a classic in fantasy.
"In using the term schizophrenia, I am not referring to any condition that I suppose to be mental rather than physical, or to an illness, like pneumonia, but to a label that some people pin on other people under certain social circumstances."
R.D. Laing in "The Politics of Experience", 1967.
----
Catatonia, paranoia.... all of these are descriptions rather than illnesses.
.....