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, truth, science, and values give meaning to each of the social institutions and practices concerned with mental health care. The psyche, the mind and its relation to the body, subjectivity and consciousness, personal identity and character, thought, will, memory, and emotions are equally the stuff of traditional philosophical inquiry and of the psychiatric enterprise. A new research field--the philosophy of psychiatry--began to form during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Prompted by a growing recognition that philosophical ideas underlie many aspects of clinical practice, psychiatric theorizing and research, mental health policy, and the economics and politics of mental health care, academic philosophers, practitioners, and philosophically trained psychiatrists have begun a series of vital, cross-disciplinary exchanges.

This volume provides a sampling of the research yield of those exchanges. Leading thinkers in this area, including clinicians, philosophers, psychologists, and interdisciplinary teams, provide original discussions that are not only expository and critical, but also a reflection of their authors' distinctive and often powerful and imaginative viewpoints and theories. All the discussions break new theoretical ground. As befits such an interdisciplinary effort, they are methodologically eclectic, and varied and divergent in their assumptions and conclusions; together, they comprise a significant new exploration, definition, and mapping of the philosophical aspects of psychiatric theory and practice.

Introduction

Part I - Psychopathology and Normalcy
1: Grant Gillett: Cognition: Brain Pain: Psychotic Cognition, Hallucination and Delusions
2: Jennifer Hansen: Affectivity: Depression and Mania
3: Alan Soble: Desire: Paraphilias and Distress in DSM-IV
4: Louis Charland: Character: Moral Treatment and the Personality Disorders
5: Al Mele: Action: Volitional Disorder and Addiction
6: George Graham: Self-ascription: Though Insertion
7: Stephen Braude: Memory: The Nature and Significance of Dissociation
8: Shaun Gallagher and Mette Vaever: Body: Disorders of Embodiment
9: Jennifer Radden: Identity: Personal Identity, Character Identity and Mental Disorder
10: Christian Perring: Development: Disorders of Childhood and Youth

Part 2 - Epistemology of Practice
11: Sadler: Diagnosis / Anti-Diagnosis
12: James Phillips: Understanding / Explanation
13: Tim Thornton: Reductionism / Anti-Reductionism
14: Bill Fulford: Facts / Values: Ten Principles of Values-based Medicine

Part 3 - Norms, Values and Ethics
15: Nancy Potter: Gender
16: Marilyn Nissim-Sabat: Race and Culture
17: Charles Culver and Bernard Gert: Competence
18: Daniel Robinson: Dangerousness and "the General Duty to All the World"
19: Ruth Chadwick and Gordon Aindow: Treatment and Research Ethics
20: Simon Wilson and Gwen Adshead: Criminal Responsibility
21: Margaret Battin and Brooke Hopkins: Religion

Part 4 - Theoretical Models
22: Dominic Murphy: Darwinian: Darwinian Models of Psychotherapy
23: Bettina Bergo: Psychoanalytic: Freud's Debt to Philosophy and his Copernican Revolution
24: Michael Schwartz and Osborne Wiggins: Phenomenological: Hermeneutics, Understanding and Interpretation in Psychiatry
25: Andrew Garner and Valerie Hardcastle: Neurobiological
26: Edward Erwin: Cognitive-Behavioral: Cognitive-behavior Therapy
27: Jennifer Church: Social Constructionist

Part 5 - Circumscribing Mental Disorder
28: Rom Harre: Benchmarks for Psychiatric Concepts
29: Bernard Gert and Charles Culver: Defining Mental Disorder
30: Carl Elliot: Mental Health and Its Limits

About the Authors
Index

Edited by Jennifer Radden , Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Boston, United States

Jennifer Radden received her doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University and is Professor and Chair in the Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her published research is on moral and conceptual issues arising out of the theory and practice of psychiatry.

"The publication of this book is a major event in the ongoing development of the field...a significant accomplishment...it simultaneously represents, announces, and consolidates the arrival of an exciting new field."--Metapsychology Online Book Reviews

"Highly recommended."--Choice

"The publication of this book is a major event in the ongoing development of the field...a significant accomplishment...it simultaneously represents, announces, and consolidates the arrival of an exciting new field."--Metapsychology Online Book Reviews

"Highly recommended."--Choice