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Sep. 11th, 2006 04:21 pmhttp://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/archives/spr2004/entries/mental-illness/
this is a lovely link. i'm mostly posting it for my own reference, so i can investiagte it further when i don't have a practical report and collections revision to be doing.. but at the same time I thought I might as well make it public in case anyone else cared. Got into reading Thomas Szasz last summer and it occurs to me that my module in "personality and psychological disorders" is the perfect time to stir him into my degree... ok, there might only be a minimal grain of truth in any of this, but there is some truth. you don't even have to draw the slightly dubious "witch-burnings" analogy... homosexuality and "masturbatory insanity" (cured, in boys, with a chastity belt with internal spikes which prevented erection) are more direct historical evidence and make me wonder which bits of the DSM:IV will be seen in the same way in another hundred years. paraphilias? personality disorders?
(wow - that paragraph is delightfully incoherent if you've never read the book i'm talking about, isn't it? Szasz effectively said that mental illness is a myth, a creation of the state to keep down dangerous elements.. incarceration in mental insitutions, electro-shock therapy, even medicating for things, being the modern-day equivalent of witch-burnings, controlling "undesirable" or "destablilising" elements in society. so much wank, of course, on one level - bet you all know loads of people who've benefitted from medication or even institutionalisation and don't feel that they've been burned at the stake... but at the same time, I bet you, or one of your friends, knows someone who DOES feel martyred, or at least repackaged to fit society's ticky boxes, at their own detriment.)
this is a lovely link. i'm mostly posting it for my own reference, so i can investiagte it further when i don't have a practical report and collections revision to be doing.. but at the same time I thought I might as well make it public in case anyone else cared. Got into reading Thomas Szasz last summer and it occurs to me that my module in "personality and psychological disorders" is the perfect time to stir him into my degree... ok, there might only be a minimal grain of truth in any of this, but there is some truth. you don't even have to draw the slightly dubious "witch-burnings" analogy... homosexuality and "masturbatory insanity" (cured, in boys, with a chastity belt with internal spikes which prevented erection) are more direct historical evidence and make me wonder which bits of the DSM:IV will be seen in the same way in another hundred years. paraphilias? personality disorders?
(wow - that paragraph is delightfully incoherent if you've never read the book i'm talking about, isn't it? Szasz effectively said that mental illness is a myth, a creation of the state to keep down dangerous elements.. incarceration in mental insitutions, electro-shock therapy, even medicating for things, being the modern-day equivalent of witch-burnings, controlling "undesirable" or "destablilising" elements in society. so much wank, of course, on one level - bet you all know loads of people who've benefitted from medication or even institutionalisation and don't feel that they've been burned at the stake... but at the same time, I bet you, or one of your friends, knows someone who DOES feel martyred, or at least repackaged to fit society's ticky boxes, at their own detriment.)
