While there may be organic causes of insanity, insane behaviour contravenes social norms and treatment is a form of social control. Scientific psychiatry does not represent an advance in knowledge, but merely a more subtle and sophisticated form of social control. For Foucault, psychiatry is the triumph of 'reason' over 'madness' in the form of social exclusion and confinement. There is also a feminist critique which makes several claims. Women are more likely than men to be labelled as insane.
Psychoanalysis also treats women as deficient.
Anti-Psychiatry Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 2. Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 3. Theory Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 4. Medical Model Penguin Dictionary of Sociology 5. All rights reserved.