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Body-Subjects and Disordered Minds: Treating the 'Whole' Person in Psychiatry
How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine.
The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific".
The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book
both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry.
Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health.
The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific".
The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book
both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry.
Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health.
- GenresPsychologyPsychiatry
200 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2007
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July 2, 2015
Matthews explores the Cartesian model for psychiatry that treats the body as a causal mechanism within a deterministic conception; this model, however, is inadequate for a field which purports to study the meaning of experiences: mental illness is not a breakdown of the "brain" per se, but a maladaptation to our environment. As such, mental illness needs to be conceived on new terms: Matthews proposes a model based on Merleau-Ponty's "body-subject" conception of perceiving beings.
Merleau-Ponty's human being is an embodied person foremost; our very being manifests through our presence, our bodily actions. For example, when I become excited to see someone I haven't for a long time, the pitch and tone of my voice change, I wave my arms, smile, and so on. My excitement is manifest in my actions: we cannot say it exists separately from them.
Matthews' new model for a psychiatry of body-subjects is not the strength of this work. The first half of the book is an explication of basic philosophical problems, such as objectivity-subjectivity, causality-correlation, explained in terms of their relevance to psychiatry. Several chapters towards the later part then explicate the body-subject, while later chapters delve into legal and ethical implications of the new schema. Matthews' new model is not explicated in detail, it remains vague and at superficial levels of distinguishing between possible dualisms. Perhaps this is because Matthews gets lost in simple examples; there are pages and pages of examples taken from every day experience that are described "experientially". However, lacking any poetical prowess, these establish nothing more than what just a few sentences could explicate. The dualisms these examples try to uncover, however, pervade the work to the extent that they become definitive for the body-subject schema itself; Matthews for example, relies heavily on his distinction between causal-explanation and meaning-explanation.
Overall, this work is indispensable to those interested in foundations of thinking of mental illness; however, the model should be carefully thought and deeply examined by those interested in its implications.
Merleau-Ponty's human being is an embodied person foremost; our very being manifests through our presence, our bodily actions. For example, when I become excited to see someone I haven't for a long time, the pitch and tone of my voice change, I wave my arms, smile, and so on. My excitement is manifest in my actions: we cannot say it exists separately from them.
Matthews' new model for a psychiatry of body-subjects is not the strength of this work. The first half of the book is an explication of basic philosophical problems, such as objectivity-subjectivity, causality-correlation, explained in terms of their relevance to psychiatry. Several chapters towards the later part then explicate the body-subject, while later chapters delve into legal and ethical implications of the new schema. Matthews' new model is not explicated in detail, it remains vague and at superficial levels of distinguishing between possible dualisms. Perhaps this is because Matthews gets lost in simple examples; there are pages and pages of examples taken from every day experience that are described "experientially". However, lacking any poetical prowess, these establish nothing more than what just a few sentences could explicate. The dualisms these examples try to uncover, however, pervade the work to the extent that they become definitive for the body-subject schema itself; Matthews for example, relies heavily on his distinction between causal-explanation and meaning-explanation.
Overall, this work is indispensable to those interested in foundations of thinking of mental illness; however, the model should be carefully thought and deeply examined by those interested in its implications.
Displaying 1 of 1 review