Title: The mind and its discontents : an essay in discursive psychiatry /
Authors: Gillett, Grant, 1950-
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Year: 1999
Subjects: Mental illness; Psychiatry; Philosophy of mind; Mental Disorders; Mental Processes; Philosophy; Psychiatry; Psychological Theory; Psychiatry Philosophy
Abstract: "To understand mental illness fully, requires more than a study of biological models of mental processes and pathologies. As intensely social animals, Grant Gillett argues, we need to look for the causes of human mental disorders in our interactions with others; in social rule-following and its role in the organization of mental content; in the power relations embedded within social structures and cultural norms; and in the way that our mental life is inscribed by a cumulative life of encounters with others." "Gillett uses material arising in the study of philosophy of mind, epistemology, postmodern continental philosophy, and philosophy of language to try to elucidate the nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disorders of thought, perception, emotion, moral sense, and action. Within this framework, a series of chapters analyse important psychiatric disorders such as depression, attention deficiency, autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Along the way, Gillett explores the nature of memory and identity; of hysteria and what constitutes rational behaviour; and of what causes us to label someone a psychopath or deviant.".
Contents: 1. Mind, brain, and psychiatry -- 2. Categorization and stigmatization -- 3. The treatment of aliens -- 4. The depths of the self -- 5. Thought in disarray -- 6. The black dog and the muse -- 7. Fidgets -- 8. I and the other robots -- 9. Moral insanity and evil -- 10. My name is Legion, for we are many -- 11. I eat, therefore I am not -- 12. The meaning of hysteria -- 13. The pathologies of each are the pathologies of all -- 14. Concluding autobiographical postscript.