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Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb, panoramic investigation of delusion Jennifer Radden explores these questions and more, unravelling a fascinating story that ranges from Descartes’s demon to famous first-hand accounts of delusion, such as Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Radden places delusion in both a clinical and cultural context and explores a fascinating ra...
Originally published in 1985, this book provides a philosophical analysis of the concepts of madness and moral responsibility. It challenges the view that because they are victims of mental illness, the insane should not be blamed for actions resulting from their condition. The author urges a return to the neglected equation between madness and a want of reason, arguing that the impulse to excuse the criminally insane must be grounded in an appeal to their irrationality and unreasonableness. Through meticulous examination of the psychological states and behaviour patterns of major mental abnormalities, such as schizophrenia and depression, the author develops a notion of exculpating unreason. This is an interdisciplinary book which encompasses analytical philosophy, abnormal psychology and law.
This is a comprehensive resource of original essays by leading thinkers exploring the newly emerging inter-disciplinary field of the philosophy of psychiatry. The contributors aim to define this exciting field and to highlight the philosophical assumptions and issues that underlie psychiatric theory and practice, the category of mental disorder, and rationales for its social, clinical and legal treatment. As a branch of medicine and a healing practice, psychiatry relies on presuppositions that are deeply and unavoidably philosophical. Conceptions of rationality, personhood and autonomy frame our understanding and treatment of mental disorder. Philosophical questions of evidence, reality, tru...
TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. heterogeneities of self in everyday life 2. a language of successive selves 3. multiplicity through dissociation 4. succession and recurrence outside dissociative disorder 5. From abnormal psychology to metaphysics: a methodological preamble 6. memory, responsibility, and contrition 7. purposes and discourses of responsibility ascription 8. multiplicity and legal culpability 9. paternalistic intervention 10. responsibilities over oneself in the future of one's future selves 11. a mataphysics of successive selves 12. the normative tug of individualism 13. therapeutic goals for a liberal culture 14. continuity sufficient for individualism 15. the divided minds of mental disorder 16. the grammar of disownership.
Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art.
In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and finally, those that explore the sad and apprehensive mood states long associated with melancholy and depressive subjectivity. A newly written introduction maps the conceptual landscape, and draws out the analytic and thematic interconnections between the chapters. Radden emphasizes and develops several new themes: the implications, theoretical phe...
Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases (or pathological conditions) that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories.
The practice of psychiatric care for those with severe mental disorders is the focus of this interdisciplinary work by a philosopher and a clinician. In elucidating the moral psychology and character called for by that setting, The Virtuous Psychiatrist offers a sustained application of virtue theory to the particular practice of psychiatry.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Soon to be an FX TV series streaming on DISNEY+ From the author of Empire of Pain – a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.
Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art.