Abstract
Critical psychiatry has recently echoed Szasz’s longstanding concerns about medical understandings of mental distress. According to Szaszianism, the analogy between mental and somatic disorders is illegitimate because the former presuppose psychosocial and ethical norms, whereas the latter merely involve deviations from natural ones. So-called “having-it-both-ways” views have contested that social norms and values play a role in both mental and somatic healthcare, thus rejecting that the influence of socio-normative considerations in mental healthcare compromises the analogy between mental and somatic disorders. This paper has two goals. Firstly, I argue that having-it-both-ways views fail to provide a compelling answer to Szasz’s challenge. The reason is that what is essential to Szasz’s argument is not that mental disorder attributions involve value judgements, but that mental attributions in general do. Mental disorders are thus doubly value-laden and, qua mental, only metaphorically possible. To illustrate this, I construe Szasz’s view and Fulford’s having-it-both-ways approach as endorsing two different kinds of expressivism about mental disorders, pointing out their different implications for the analysis of delusions. Secondly, I argue, against Szaszianism, that Szasz’s rejection of the analogy is relatively irrelevant for discussions about the appropriateness of medicalizing mental distress. Specifically, I draw from socio-normative approaches to the psychopathology/social deviance distinction and mad and neurodiversity literature to argue that a) it is still possible to distinguish social deviance from psychopathology once we reject the analogy; and b) that both medicalizing and normalizing attitudes to mental distress can harmfully wrong people from relevant collectives.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.