Abstract
It has seemed to me and many others that Britain is now entering a political phase in which the post-war consensus around matters of social welfare is being dissolved in favour of a new set of assumptions which emphasize the individual's recourse to law or to legally-embodied appeal procedures, even at the expense of more collective rights which were previously enshrined (imperfectly, it is true, but still definitely) in State-sponsored welfare provision. As I present it here, the implication is made of a fundamental antagonism, perhaps, and more certainly of a serious and unmistakable competition, between the claims of a legally-inspired and individualistic approach and the aspirations of medicine and psychiatry which are grounded in the availability of collective provisions: collective in a double sense, as being both the product of politically organized popular demand and also the expression of structured interventions by the State and other social agencies aligned with the State. It is this dualism between medicine and law, or at a more rarefied level between an individualism founded on contractual civil relations and a collectivism rooted in the institutions of mass democracy and public spending, which I feel needs most justification in argument, and which clearly lacks such justification in the remarks I shall offer here.
Highlights
It has seemed to me and many others that Britain is entering a political phase in which the post-war consensus around matters of social welfare is being dissolved in favour of a new set of assumptions which emphasize the individual's recourse to law or to legally-embodied appeal procedures, even at the expense of more collective rights which were pre viously enshrined in State-sponsored welfare provision
As I present it here, the implication is made of a fundamental antagonism, perhaps, and more certainly of a serious and unmistakable com petition, between the claims of a legally-inspired and individualistic approach and the aspirations of medicine and psychiatry which are grounded in the availability of col lective provisions: collective in a double sense, as being both the product of politically organized popular demand and the expression of structured interventions by the State and other social agencies aligned with the State
It is this dualism between medicine and law, or at a more rarefied level between an individualism founded on contractual civil relations and a collectivism rooted in the institutions of mass democracy and public spending, which I feel needs most justification in argument, and which clearly lacks such justification in the remarks I shall oner here
Summary
It has seemed to me and many others that Britain is entering a political phase in which the post-war consensus around matters of social welfare is being dissolved in favour of a new set of assumptions which emphasize the individual's recourse to law or to legally-embodied appeal procedures, even at the expense of more collective rights which were pre viously enshrined (imperfectly, it is true, but still definitely) in State-sponsored welfare provision. As if Conservative administra tions have a tendency to step up and move forward policies of mental hospital abolitionism which in a more diffuse and general way are part of the policy consensus accepted by all parties, both political and medical.
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