Madness and justice.

Abstract

This article makes the case for “social justice” in relation to the conceptions of “madness” that currently operate in mental health practice. The argument proceeds in eight steps which challenge dominant views of “madness” in the discipline of psychology. Each of these eight steps is linked to the question of social justice. The first step concerns the irresolvable differences between “models” of madness, with a focus here on four mainstream models: the psychiatric medical model, psychoanalytic conceptions of “psychosis,” systemic interventions into family systems, and cognitive– behavioral therapy approaches. The second step concerns the differences internal to each of these models. In the third step I identify a fifth “model” which is usually occluded in psychological debate, the model madness elaborates of itself. The article then turns to the social conditions that structure different models of madness. Step four of the argument is to emphasize the way that models of madness are embedded in structures of power and point five steps back to the historical separation of reason from unreason as condition of possibility for “madness” as such to be configured as object of psychology. Step six is concerned with the “madness” of contemporary social reality, and step seven with the way that this socially structured madness informs clinical practice. The eighth step is to draw attention to already-existing alternative social practices; social justice in action organized by and for the mental health system user and survivor movements.