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Alien Landscapes?: Interpreting Disordered Minds
We have made huge progress in understanding the biology of mental illnesses, but comparatively little in interpreting them at the psychological level. The eminent philosopher Jonathan Glover believes that there is real hope of progress in the human interpretation of disordered minds.
The challenge is that the inner worlds of people with psychiatric disorders can seem strange, like alien landscapes, and this strangeness can deter attempts at understanding. Do people with disorders share enough psychology with other people to make interpretation possible? To explore this question, Glover tackles the hard cases the inner worlds of hospitalized violent criminals, of people with delusions, and of those diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Their first-person accounts offer glimpses of inner worlds behind apparently bizarre psychiatric conditions and allow us to begin to learn the language used to express psychiatric disturbance. Art by psychiatric patients, or by such complex figures as van Gogh and William Blake, give insight when interpreted from Glover s unique perspective. He also draws on dark chapters in psychiatry s past to show the importance of not medicalizing behavior that merely transgresses social norms. And finally, Glover suggests values, especially those linked with agency and identity, to guide how the boundaries of psychiatry should be drawn.
Seamlessly blending philosophy, science, literature, and art, Alien Landscapes?" is both a sustained defense of humanistic psychological interpretation and a compelling example of the rich and generous approach to mental life for which it argues."
The challenge is that the inner worlds of people with psychiatric disorders can seem strange, like alien landscapes, and this strangeness can deter attempts at understanding. Do people with disorders share enough psychology with other people to make interpretation possible? To explore this question, Glover tackles the hard cases the inner worlds of hospitalized violent criminals, of people with delusions, and of those diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Their first-person accounts offer glimpses of inner worlds behind apparently bizarre psychiatric conditions and allow us to begin to learn the language used to express psychiatric disturbance. Art by psychiatric patients, or by such complex figures as van Gogh and William Blake, give insight when interpreted from Glover s unique perspective. He also draws on dark chapters in psychiatry s past to show the importance of not medicalizing behavior that merely transgresses social norms. And finally, Glover suggests values, especially those linked with agency and identity, to guide how the boundaries of psychiatry should be drawn.
Seamlessly blending philosophy, science, literature, and art, Alien Landscapes?" is both a sustained defense of humanistic psychological interpretation and a compelling example of the rich and generous approach to mental life for which it argues."
448 pages, ebook
First published September 1, 2014
4 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Glover
27 books55 followersJonathan Glover (born 1941) is a British philosopher known for his studies on bioethics. He was educated in Tonbridge School, later going on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford. He currently teaches ethics at King's College London. Glover is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in the United States.
In Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover makes the case for Applied Ethics. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century and considers what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis.
In 1977 he argued that to call a fetus a human person was to stretch the term beyond its natural boundaries.
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."
In 1989 the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research in Europe.
He is married to Vivette Glover a prominent neuroscientist.
In Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover makes the case for Applied Ethics. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century and considers what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis.
In 1977 he argued that to call a fetus a human person was to stretch the term beyond its natural boundaries.
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."
In 1989 the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research in Europe.
He is married to Vivette Glover a prominent neuroscientist.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 3, 2015
Glover proposes that instead of mental "states" or even "spectrums," psychology consider mentality to consist of "landscapes" which are complex structures which a person inhabits. This fascinating exploration of abnormal or "alien" landscapes offers stunning insight through medicine, history, literature, and art.
March 29, 2020
Got this unwieldy looking book on a "productive" "learning" "self-improvement" whim based on a Philosophy and Psychopathology syllabus. And I finished it!! Wow!! I really like how clear and cautious the writing is, and the overall, generous approach of centering first person accounts, using them as unit of analysis. It's crazy that this is novel? I haven't read very much psychology tbh but my sense, based also on the cites (at one pt Glover criticizes a theory for having no basis lol), is that Freud + others pulled stuff out of their asses?? Maybe psychology no longer looks like this but the cites to first person accounts + literature also stood out to me in contrast to other philosophy texts. Philosophy should be more interdisciplinary! There's more to analyze than thought experiments!
But the book is broad and a bit shallow, like a textbook. Three main sections: 1) interviews + theater project with patients at mental institution, many diagnosed w antisocial personality disorder, takeaway felt like author was lightly pushing toward viewing category as environmentally influenced + changeable but I was kinda disappointed that stronger claims weren't made 2) how to determine what to pathologize (often in context of psychiatry having historically pathologized queerness), harm vs. dysfunction model, kinda disappointed that though he landed on the harm model, he didn't really offer a general model for excluding conditions that might just be stigmatized. But the discussion of varying types of autism shows how tough it might be to generalize across both conditions + individuals 3) Which makes sense in context w third section, on how helping someone with their psychiatric condition should = enabling their "self-creation" according to their own values/moral identity, taking their word for what makes them feel most like themselves/at home, re: responsibility acknowledging different degrees of control someone may have and adjusting (but not necessarily withholding) reactive attitudes accordingly
The titular "landscape" metaphor for understanding someone else's psychology really didn't do much for me. But again the focus on interpretation of first person accounts + self-creation was nice
But the book is broad and a bit shallow, like a textbook. Three main sections: 1) interviews + theater project with patients at mental institution, many diagnosed w antisocial personality disorder, takeaway felt like author was lightly pushing toward viewing category as environmentally influenced + changeable but I was kinda disappointed that stronger claims weren't made 2) how to determine what to pathologize (often in context of psychiatry having historically pathologized queerness), harm vs. dysfunction model, kinda disappointed that though he landed on the harm model, he didn't really offer a general model for excluding conditions that might just be stigmatized. But the discussion of varying types of autism shows how tough it might be to generalize across both conditions + individuals 3) Which makes sense in context w third section, on how helping someone with their psychiatric condition should = enabling their "self-creation" according to their own values/moral identity, taking their word for what makes them feel most like themselves/at home, re: responsibility acknowledging different degrees of control someone may have and adjusting (but not necessarily withholding) reactive attitudes accordingly
The titular "landscape" metaphor for understanding someone else's psychology really didn't do much for me. But again the focus on interpretation of first person accounts + self-creation was nice
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April 24, 2015616.8917 G5665 2014
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews