Vagueness In Psychiatry

In psychiatry there is no sharp boundary between the normal and the pathological. Although clear cases abound, it is often indeterminate whether a particular condition does or does not qualify as a mental disorder. For example, definitions of subthreshold disorders and of the prodromal stages of diseases are notoriously contentious. Philosophers and linguists call concepts that lack sharp boundaries, and thus admit of borderline cases, 'vague'. Although blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in many publications concerned with the classification of mental disorders, systematic approaches that take into account philosophical reflections on vagueness are rare. This book provides interdisciplinary discussions about vagueness in psychiatry by bringing together scholars from psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, history, and law. It draws together various lines of inquiry into the nature of gradations between mental health and disease and discusses the individual and societal consequences of dealing with blurred boundaries in medical practice, forensic psychiatry, and beyond. --

“Gary Greenberg has become the Dante of our psychiatric age, and the DSM-5 is his Inferno.” —Errol Morris Since its debut in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has set down the “official” view on what constitutes mental illness. Homosexuality, for instance, was a mental illness until 1973. Each revision has created controversy, but the DSM-5 has taken fire for encouraging doctors to diagnose more illnesses—and to prescribe sometimes unnecessary or harmful medications. Respected author and practicing psychotherapist Gary Greenberg embedded himself in the war that broke out over the fifth edition, and returned with an unsettling tale. Exposing the deeply flawed process behind the DSM-5’s compilation, The Book of Woe reveals how the manual turns suffering into a commodity—and made the APA its own biggest beneficiary.

“The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays. Thomas Szasz's classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.

Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes " vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of ", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, this book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive vagueness in law from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. The chapters of the book are organized into three parts. The first part addresses the import of different theories of vagueness for the law, referring to a wide range of theories from supervaluationist to contextualist and semantic realist accounts in order to address the question of whether the law can learn from engaging with philosophical discussions of vagueness. The second part of the book examines different vagueness phenomena. The contributions in part 2 suggest that the greater awareness to different vagueness phenomena can make lawyers aware of specific issues and solutions so far overlooked. The third part deals with the pragmatic aspects of vagueness in law, providing answers to the question of how to deal with vagueness in law and with the professional, political, moral, and ethical issues such vagueness gives rise to.

In recent years the philosophy of information has emerged as an important area of research in philosophy. However, until now information’s philosophical history has been largely overlooked. Information and the History of Philosophy is the first comprehensive investigation of the history of philosophical questions around information, including work from before the Common Era to the twenty-first century. It covers scientific and technology-centred notions of information, views of human information processing, as well as socio-political topics such as the control and use of information in societies. Organised into five parts, 19 chapters by an international team of contributors cover the following topics and more: Information before 500 CE, including ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman approaches to information; Early theories of information processing, sources of information and cognition; Information and computation in Leibniz, visualised scientific information, copyright and social reform; The nineteenth century, including biological information, knowledge economies and information’s role in empire and eugenics; Recent and contemporary philosophy of information, including racialised information, Shannon information and the very idea of an information revolution. Information and the History of Philosophy is a landmark publication in this emerging field. As such, it is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, philosophy of science and technology, and library and information studies. It is also a valuable resource for those working in subjects such as the history of science, media and communication studies and intellectual history.

Psychiatry Reborn: Biopsychosocial Psychiatry in Modern Medicine is a comprehensive collection of essays by leading experts in the field, and provides a timely reassessment of the biopsychosocial approach in psychiatry. Spanning the sciences and philosophy of psychiatry, the essays offer complementary perspectives on the ever more urgent importance of the biopsychosocial approach to modern medicine. The collection brings together ideas from the series of Loebel Lectures by world leaders in the field of psychiatry and associated Workshops at the University of Oxford, including revised versions of the Lectures themselves, and a wide range of related commentaries and position pieces. With contributions from psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, the book provides the most comprehensive account to date of the interplay between biological, psychological, and social factors in mental health and their ethical dimensions. The 23 chapters of this multi-authored book review the history and place of the biopsychosocial model in medicine, and explore its strengths and shortcomings. In particular, it considers how understanding this interplay might lead to more effective treatments for mental health disorders, as developments in genomic and neurobiological medicine challenge traditional conceptions and approaches to the research and treatment of mental health disorders. The book explores the challenges and rewards of developing diagnostic tools and clinical interventions that take account of the inextricably intertwined bio-psycho-social domains, and the ethical implications of the conceptualization. It concludes with chapters drawing together the book's range of expertise to propose a best conception of the model, and how it might be adopted going forward in an age of exponentially increasing technological advances and of integrated/collaborative care. The volume is intended to present the BPS model as it stands today in the academy, the lab, and the clinic, and to start to address the challenges and potential that the model has for each.

Advances in psychiatric research and clinical psychiatry in the last 30 years have given rise to a host of new questions that lie at the intersection of psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy and law. Such questions include: -Are psychiatric disorders diseases of the brain, caused by dysfunctional neural circuits and neurotransmitters? -What role do genes, neuro-endocrine, neuro-immune interactions and the environment play in the development of these disorders? -How do different explanations of the etiology and pathophysiology of mental illness influence diagnosis, prognosis and decisions about treatment? -Would it be rational for a person with a chronic treatment-resistant disorder to request euthanasia or assisted suicide to end their suffering? -Could psychiatric disorders be predicted and prevented? Psychiatric Neuroethics explores these questions in a comprehensive and systematic way, discussing the medical and philosophical implications of neuroscience and the Research Domain Criteria (RDoc) in the fields of psychiatry and mental health. It examines the extent to which circuit-based criteria can offer a satisfactory explanation of psychiatric disorders and how they compare with the symptom-based criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV). This book will be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience, including psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, philosophers, psychologists and legal theorists.

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.