Abstract
Medicine thrives on dissent. Of all the medical disciplines, psychiatry seems to generate the highest level of dissent, both from inside and outside the profession: no other medical discipline, for example, has some of its own members consistently argue that its very foundations are rooted in a series of harmful myths (Szasz, 1974, 2003). The best responses to this type of criticism identify the core concerns of the critic, dissect out the most relevant arguments and develop ways to integrate useful suggestions with existing knowledge, so as to advance the field in a pragmatic, sensible and evidence-based fashion. Such constructive responses to controversy are rare.
Highlights
Psychiatry in Dissent was a highly ambitious book, aimed at providing a rational counter-argument to the most trenchant critics of psychiatry in the 1970s, and establishing a reasoned middle ground between the antipsychiatry movement and the emergent school of biological psychiatry
The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the contemporary relevance of Psychiatry in Dissent on the 30th anniversary of its publication
Clare started his book by focusing on the very concept of mental illness and addressing the criticisms of psychiatric diagnosis and classification presented by, among others, Szasz, Laing and Foucault
Summary
Psychiatry in Dissent was a highly ambitious book, aimed at providing a rational counter-argument to the most trenchant critics of psychiatry in the 1970s, and establishing a reasoned middle ground between the antipsychiatry movement and the emergent school of biological psychiatry. Clare started his book by focusing on the very concept of mental illness and addressing the criticisms of psychiatric diagnosis and classification presented by, among others, Szasz, Laing and Foucault.
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