Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds

Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds PDF Author: Eric Matthews
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191584606
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
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.

Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds

Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds PDF Author: Eric Matthews
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191584606
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Embodied Selves and Divided Minds

Embodied Selves and Divided Minds PDF Author: Michelle Maiese
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199689237
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Embodied Selves and Divided Minds examines how research in embodied cognition and enactivism can contribute to our understanding of the nature of self-consciousness, the metaphysics of personal identity, and the disruptions to self-awareness that occur in case of psychopathology. It begins with the assumption that if we take embodiment seriously, then the resulting conception of the self (as physically grounded in the living body) can help us to make sense of how a minded subject persists across time. However, rather than relying solely on puzzle cases to discuss diachronic persistence and the sense of self, this work looks to schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder as case studies. Here we find real-life examples of anomalous phenomena that signify disruptions to embodied self-experience and appear to indicate a fragmentation of the self. However, rather than concluding that these disorders count as genuine instances of multiplicity, the book's discussion of the self and personal identity allows us to understand the characteristic symptoms of these disorders as significant disruptions to self-consciousness. The concluding chapter then examines the implications of this theoretical framework for the clinical treatment of schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. Embodied Selves and Divided Minds reveals how a critical dialogue between Philosophy and Psychiatry can lead to a better understanding of important issues surrounding self-consciousness, personal identity, and psychopathology.

Mapping the Edges and the In-between

Mapping the Edges and the In-between PDF Author: Nancy Nyquist Potter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198530218
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a diagnosis given to a significant number of people in the Western world. Yet many of the core concepts & symptoms that go with this diagnosis are questionable. This book presents a compelling analysis of BPD, arguing that it needs to be approached in a new light- one that will benefit patients.

Psychiatric Neuroethics

Psychiatric Neuroethics PDF Author: Walter Glannon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198758855
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Advances in psychiatric research and clinical psychiatry in the last 30 years have given rise to new questions that lie at the intersection of psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy and law. Bringing these topics together for the first time, this book explores the medical and philosophical implications of neuroscience in the mental health field.

Free Will and Responsibility

Free Will and Responsibility PDF Author: John S. Callender
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199545553
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
This book explores the evolution of morality and the roles of reason and emotion in the making of moral judgments. It describes scientific research on volitional behaviour, moral decision-making, and criminality, discussing what this might mean for our practices of blame and punishment, and applying this knowledge to clinical conditions.

Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man

Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man PDF Author: Allan Beveridge
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191625477
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
RD Laing remains one of the most famous psychiatrists of the last 50 years. In the 1960s he enjoyed enormous popularity and received much publicity for his controversial views challenging the psychiatric orthodoxy. He championed the rights of the patient, and challenged the often inhumane methods of treating the mentally ill. Based on a wealth of previously unexamined archives relating to his private papers and clinical notes, Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man sheds new light on RD Laing, and in particular his early formative years - a crucial but largely overlooked period in his life. The first half of the book considers Laing's intellectual journey through the world of ideas and his development as a psychiatric theorist. An analysis of his notebooks and personal library reveals Laing's engagement not only with psychiatric theory, but also with a wide range of other disciplines, such as philosophy, literature, and religion. This part of the book considers how this shaped Laing's writing about madness and his evolution as a clinician. The second half draws on a rich and completely unexplored collection of Laing's clinical notes, which detail his encounters with patients in his early years as a psychiatrist, firstly in the British Army, subsequently in the psychiatric hospitals of Glasgow, and finally in the Tavistock Clinic in London. These notes reveal what Laing was actually doing in clinical practice, and how theory interacted with therapy. The majority of patients who were to appear in Laing's first two books, The Divided Self and The Self and Others have been identified from these records, and this volume provides a fascinating account of how the published case histories compare to the original notes. There is a considerable mythology surrounding Laing, partly created by himself and partly by subsequent commentators. By a careful examination of primary sources, Allan Beveridge, both a psychiatrist and an historian, examines the many mythological narratives about Laing and provide a critical but not unsympathetic account of this colourful and contradictory thinker, who addressed questions about the nature of madness which are still being asked today. This book will be of interest to mental health workers and social historians alike as well as anybody interested in the philosophy of psychiatry.

Thinking Through Dementia

Thinking Through Dementia PDF Author: Julian C. Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199570663
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Dementia affects millions of people throughout the world. 'Thinking Through Dementia' offers a critique of the main models used to understand dementia. It discusses clinical issues and cases, together with philosophical work that might help us to better understand and treat this illness.

Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis

Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis PDF Author: Linda Brakel
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199581479
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In 'Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis', Linda Brakel tackles a range of fascinating and puzzling phenomena that lie at the border between psychoanalysis and philosophy of mind. These include - unconscious knowing, vagueness, agency, the placebo effect, and even explanation itself. Unique in its use of tools and concepts from both philosophy and psychoanalysis, the book demonstrates how this interdisciplinary approach can provide some unique solutions to some impenetrable problems. Following the introduction, chapter two on 'unconscious knowing' puts forward a radical epistemological view of knowledge and belief, providing evidence from psychoanalytic data and empirical research, using the subliminal method. Chapter three considers philosophical accounts of vagueness in relation to a-rational mentation, finding surprising similarities. In Chapter four, an original account of agency is developed whilst discovering that a central problem for analysands is quite analogous to an important philosophical problem: namely, when I am concerned with my own survival, just what is the nature of the 'me' of concern? In Chapter five the mysterious placebo effect is made more understandable in terms of the basic psychoanalytic concepts that are shown to underlie it. Finally, chapter six concludes the book with an examination of explanations in general, including those in the proceeding chapters. This is a book that will be of great interest to those within both psychoanalysis and philosophy of mind, offering up some compelling explanations for some puzzling phenomena.

The Sublime Object of Psychiatry

The Sublime Object of Psychiatry PDF Author: Angela Woods
Publisher: International Perspectives in
ISBN: 0199583951
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Schizophrenia has been one of psychiatry's most contested diagnostic categories. The Sublime object of Psychiatry studies representations of schizophrenia across a wide range of disciplines and discourses: biological and phenomenological psychiatry, psychoanalysis, critical psychology, antipsychiatry, and postmodern philosophy.

Responsibility and Psychopathy

Responsibility and Psychopathy PDF Author: Luca Malatesti
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199551634
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
The discussion of whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their behaviour has long taken place in philosophy. In recent years this has moved into scientific and psychiatric investigation. Responsibility and Psychopathy discusses this subject from both the philosophical and scientific disciplines, as well as a legal perspective.