Disorders are reduced normativity emerging from the relationship between organisms and their environment
Publication year
2017Author(s)
Publisher
Cham : Springer International Publishing
Series
International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine ; 69
ISBN
9783319428321
In
Hens, K.; Cutas, D.; Horstkötter, D. (ed.), Parental responsibility in the context of neuroscience and genetics, pp. 35-54Publication type
Part of book or chapter of book
Display more detailsDisplay less details
Editor(s)
Hens, K.
Cutas, D.
Horstkötter, D.
Organization
SW OZ BSI OLO
Languages used
English (eng)
Book title
Hens, K.; Cutas, D.; Horstkötter, D. (ed.), Parental responsibility in the context of neuroscience and genetics
Page start
p. 35
Page end
p. 54
Subject
International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine; Learning and PlasticityAbstract
The rise of modern medicine has led to a distinction between physical illness and health based on physiological measures. Psychiatry, the study of mental disorders, contingent on the medical model, attempts to establish a science that distinguishes between normal and pathological conditions. Following the work of the medical doctor George Canguilhem, this paper provides a conceptual analysis of disorders. Along the lines of Canguilhem, I will argue that medicine and psychiatry cannot be sciences in the sense in which physics or chemistry are sciences (that is, with a claim of objectivity or being value-free), because to establish that someone is healthy or has a pathology requires a normative act - and thus a departure from any ideals of objectivity. Health means the ability to maintain life given the existing circumstances, whereas pathology is the diminished possibility of adaptation to the environment. Because health and pathology are the irreducible result of the relationship between the organism and its environment, an individual cannot objectively be assigned a pathology or disorder.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238441]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [29483]
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