The truth in social construction

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-108
Author(s):  
Neil Levy
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Biological Psychiatry ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Diagnostic And Statistical Manual ◽  
Social Explanation ◽  
Neural Dysfunctions ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Research Domain

Central strands of biological psychiatry, such as the Research Domain Criteria championed by Thomas Insel, aim to identify mental illnesses with genetic and/or neural dysfunctions. Such approaches are justified by the mismatch between psychopathologies picked out by descriptive criteria (such as those used by the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and neural correlates: patients presenting with the same symptoms may share little at the neural level, while those who share dysfunction at the neural level may exhibit quite different symptoms. Biological psychiatry is typically understood as opposed to social constructionist approaches to mental illness. This chapter argues that because symptomatology and disorders of neural circuits fail to match, biological psychiatry needs to embrace social construction, broadly understood. The differences at the level of symptomatology will often be explicable by differences in patients’ individual histories and social and cultural settings. The notion that social construction and biological psychiatry are mutually exclusive arises from an inchoate and incoherent feeling on both sides that only the second offers a physicalist explanation of mind and behaviour; in fact, a social explanation can ultimately be cashed out in physicalist terms. Nevertheless, systematicity of the kind sciences seek will need to be sought at the level of representations, as well as at the level of the brain, since cultural and social factors are unlikely to be able to be cashed out in terms of physical natural kinds.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Causal Social Construction

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Marques
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Stereotype Threat ◽  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Social Kinds ◽  
Performance Effects ◽  
Social Causes

AbstractSocial constructionist claims are surprising and interesting when they entail that presumably natural kinds are in fact socially constructed. The claims are interesting because of their theoretical and political importance. Authors like Díaz-León argue that constitutive social construction is more relevant for achieving social justice than causal social construction. This paper challenges this claim. Assuming there are socially salient groups that are discriminated against, the paper presents a dilemma: if there were no constitutively constructed social kinds, the causes of the discrimination of existing social groups would have to be addressed, and understanding causal social construction would be relevant to achieve social justice. On the other hand, not all possible constitutively socially constructed kinds are actual social kinds. If an existing social group is constitutively constructed as a social kind K, the fact that it actually exists as a K has social causes. Again, causal social construction is relevant. The paper argues that (i) for any actual social kind X, if X is constitutively socially constructed as K, then it is also causally socially constructed; and (ii) causal social construction is at least as relevant as constitutive social construction for concerns of social justice. For illustration, I draw upon two phenomena that are presumed to contribute towards the discrimination of women: (i) the poor performance effects of stereotype threat, and (ii) the silencing effects of gendered language use.

scholarly journals Coming out of the closet "six feet under": textual silences and the social construction of the family stage in the obituary genres

2006 ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Corona Marzol
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Textual Description ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Social Explanation ◽  
Ethnographic Analysis ◽  
Constant Element

The 'Family' stage -the lines devoted to the surviving members of the deceased's family- is a 'constant element' (Hasan 1985) in obituaries. The present study is built up around the structural analysis of genres as developed by Bhatia (1993, 2004), Hasan (1985), Martin (1985, 1992), and Swales (1990). The purpose of this study is to bring a social explanation or understanding to bear on the textual description of the 'Family' stage from a corpus of obituaries published in more than two hundred American and British newspapers collected over a period of three years. The research process has developed two more steps. First, following Huckin's (2004) notion of content analysis, quantitative and qualitative modes have been applied, trying to identify the content which is not manifest. Secondly, the identification of 'textual silences' (Huckin 2002) is followed by an exploratory ethnographic analysis (Scollon 1998) on two case studies. This multi-staged analysis is aimed at a more comprehensive account of the obituary genre as a social process (Kress 1993). It shall be argued that the 'Family' stage encapsulates one of the most controversial topics of our time.

scholarly journals The hermeneutics of mental symptoms in the Cambridge School

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Aragona ◽  
Ivana S. Marková
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kinds ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
New Model ◽  
Mental Symptom ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Cambridge School ◽  
Symptom Formation

Current Psychiatry is in crisis. Decades of neuroscientific research have not yet delivered adequate explanations or treatments. One reason for this failure may be the wrongness of its central assumption, namely that mental symptoms and disorders are natural kinds. The Cambridge School has proposed that a new Epistemology must be constructed for Psychiatry, and that this should start with the development of a new model of mental symptom-formation. ‘Mental symptoms’ should be considered as hermeneutic co-constructions occurring in a intersubjective space created by the dialogue between sufferer and healer. Subjective experiences (caused either by neurobiological or psychosocial upheaval) penetrate the awareness of sufferers causing perplexity and/or distress. To understand, handle and communicate these experiences, sufferers proceed to configure them by means of templates borrowed from their own culture. Importantly, however, the same neurobiological information can be configured into different symptoms; and different neurobiological information into the same symptom. Therefore, ‘mental symptoms’ are dissimilar hybrid combinations of neurobiological and cultural information. To be ethical, therapeutic interventions must take into account such dissimilarities. Blind manipulation of the brain in all cases should be considered as counterproductive.

scholarly journals A knowledge network for a dynamic taxonomy of psychiatric disease

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-87 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Knowledge Network ◽  
Psychiatric Disease ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Research Domain Criteria ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Research Domain

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project was initiated by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in early 2009 as the implementation of Goal 1.4 of its just-issued strategic plan. In keeping with the NIMH mission, to "transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research," RDoC was explicitly conceived as a research-related initiative. The statement of the relevant goal in the strategic plan reads: "Develop, for research purposes, new ways of classifying mental disorders based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures." Due to the novel approach that RDoC takes to conceptualizing and studying mental disorders, it has received widespread attention, well beyond the borders of the immediate research community. This review discusses the rationale for the experimental framework that RDoC has adopted, and its implications for the nosology of mental disorders in the future.

7. Into the 21st century

2018 ◽  
pp. 112-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Burns
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Core ◽  
New Treatment ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Manage Mental

‘Into the 21st century’ explains how there is an increased focus on how our body, and not just the brain, influences our mental health. Rapidly advancing computer technology, including artificial intelligence and virtual reality, is beginning to provide new treatment possibilities, not just support and simplify the old ones. The development of sophisticated imaging has supercharged the area of neurosciences and the increased understanding of genetics and the new science of epigenetics provide psychiatry with greater tools to identify and manage mental illnesses. A paradox with our increasingly technological and scientific advances is that the core dilemmas of psychiatry appear not to be diminishing. Psychiatry will survive the 21st century, but certainly it is changing.

5. Psychiatry under attack—inside and out

2018 ◽  
pp. 77-89
Author(s):  
Tom Burns
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Brain Diseases ◽  
Social Oppression ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

‘Psychiatry under attack’ focuses on the contradictions inherent in psychiatry. The mind–brain relationship is the big issue in psychiatry. It would be simple if psychiatry were just about ‘brain diseases’, but psychiatry concerns ‘mental’ illnesses. While many mental illnesses involve disorders of the brain, not all brain diseases are mental illnesses. Psychiatry originally viewed mental illnesses as inherited weaknesses. However, Freud and his followers shifted the balance to ‘nurture’. The ‘anti-psychiatry movement’ of the 1960s and 1970s, led by Szasz, Foucault, and Laing, condemned psychiatry as confusing at best and an instrument of social oppression at worst. There is now less opposition to psychiatry though disquiet remains about aspects of its practice.

A historical perspective on neurological and neuropsychiatric definitions

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
German E Berrios ◽  
Ivana S Marková
Keyword(s):  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Biological Psychiatry ◽  
Mental Symptom ◽  
Mental Diseases ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Agreed Definition

Taking a historical epistemological perspective, this chapter explores how neurology and neuropsychiatry were constructed. As a medical specialism developing in the 19th century, neurology resulted from the convergence of: (1) the term ‘neurology’; (2) a set of concepts; and (3) a list of disorders. Such a convergence was facilitated by changes in the manner in which the concepts of neuroses, central nervous system, and lesion were to be defined after 1860. Neuropsychiatry carries a less stable epistemology. Underpinned by the foundational claim that mental diseases are diseases of the brain, its meaning has changed pari passu with redefinitions of the concepts such as mind, mental symptom, cause, and meaning. In the UK, there is no agreed definition of neuropsychiatry either and hence what is currently known as ‘organic/biological psychiatry’ and the claim that psychiatry is just a subregion of neurology cannot be considered as coterminous.

The Social Construction of Human Kinds

Hypatia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 716-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ásta Kristjana Sveinsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
The Social ◽  
Metaphysical Claim ◽  
Human Kinds ◽  
Response Dependence ◽  
Human Kind

Social construction theorists face a certain challenge to the effect that they confuse the epistemic and the metaphysical: surely our conceptions of something are influenced by social practices, but that doesn't show that the nature of the thing in question is so influenced. In this paper I take up this challenge and offer a general framework to support the claim that a human kind is socially constructed, when this is understood as a metaphysical claim and as a part of a social constructionist debunking project. I give reasons for thinking that a conferralist framework is better equipped to capture the social constructionist intuition than rival accounts of social properties, such as a constitution account and a response‐dependence account, and that this framework helps to diagnose what is at stake in the debate between the social constructionists and their opponents. The conferralist framework offered here should be welcomed by social constructionists looking for firm foundations for their claims, and for anyone else interested in the debate over the social construction of human kinds.

Diagnoses are not Diseases

1992 ◽  
Vol 161 (5) ◽  
pp. 686-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. S. Mindham ◽  
J. G. Scadding ◽  
R. H. Cawley
Keyword(s):  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Mental Illnesses ◽  
Multiple Personality Disorder ◽  
Factitious Disorder ◽  
Compulsive Gambling ◽  
American Mind ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Brain

The psychiatric community seems determined to ground its medical legitimacy on principles that confuse diagnoses with disease. If mental illnesses are diseases of the CNS, they are diseases of the brain, not the mind. If mental illnesses are the names of (mis)behaviour, they are forms of behaviour, not diseases. Psychiatric metaphors have the same role in medicine as religious metaphors have in theology. Religion is, among other things, the institutionalised denial of a finite life. Psychiatry is, among other things, the institutionalised denial of the tragic nature of life: individuals who want to reject the reality of free will and responsibility can medicalise life, and entrust its management to health professionals. Psychiatrists have succeeded in persuading the scientific community, the courts, the media, and the general public that the conditions they call mental disorders are diseases, that is, phenomena independent of motivation or will. The more firmly psychiatrically based ideas take hold of the collective American mind, the more foolishness and injustice they generate. Long ago, the law makers agreed to let psychiatrists literalise the metaphor of mental illnesses. Thus, the Americans With Disabilities Act (AWDA), scheduled to be fully implemented by July 1992, covers claustrophobia, personality problems, and mental retardation, though unlike DSM–III–R it excludes kleptomania, pyromania, compulsive gambling, and transvestism. The literal language of psychiatry allows motivated actions to be called ‘diseases'. Other examples of behaviour for which psychiatrists have disease names, and which AWDA implicitly accepts as genuine diseases, include dysmorphophobia, multiple personality disorder, frotteurism, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and factitious disorder with physical symptoms. However, it remains an open question whether premenstrual syndrome will achieve similar recognition in DSM–IV. Diseases occur naturally, whereas diagnoses are artefacts; why do psychiatrists make diagnoses?

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