The causes of mental illness are either organic malfunctioning or in personality conflicts which have their origin in childhood. 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.