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Abstract

In this talk I will try to show why it looks plausible that the dominant model of mental disorder is neglectful of the sociocultural, but also suggest that there are ways of understanding the medical model and ways of understanding social causes of mental illness that can work together. I will distinguish between social construction, social causation and social meaning, suggesting that these are often run together in the literature, and argue that they have different implications for psychiatry. In particular, we should be sensitive to the fact that social constructionist accounts often take their psychology off the shelf, and cannot assume neurotypical psychology without begging the question.

Bio

Dominic Murphy is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the ¾«¶«´«Ã½ of Sydney. He is the author of Psychiatry in the Scientific Image (MIT 2006). Before that he taught at Caltech and was previously a fellow in the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington ¾«¶«´«Ã½, St Louis.