Abstract
Recently, a number of distinguished critics have raised fundamental questions about the knowledge claims and practices of the mental health professions. We review a few of these critiques concerning such matters as pathologizing normal experiences and reactions to events and spreading not only our brain disease conception of mental illness but our Western “symptom repertoire” as well around the globe in a detrimental manner. It is striking that for the most part these critics have almost nothing to say about genuine alternatives to the problems and cultural deficits they identify. We suggest that work done by theoretical psychologists and others working in a similar vein in recent years might help both sharpen the analysis of these dilemmas and contribute something valuable to envisioning alternative therapeutic and cultural pathways of a better sort.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A recent column by Horrigan (2010) in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on a new Army program entitled Master Resiliency Training Course speaks to this matter. The course was designed by Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, a highly accomplished woman who survived a brutal captivity during the first Gulf war and wrote a best-selling book, She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story, about her experience. She apparently managed to put her pain and possible death in perspective in a way that minimized, in her words, “fear, anger, depression or grief,” then and afterwards. In line, perhaps, with Summerfield’s (2001) observation of a cultural shift away from an emphasis on “resilience and composure,” Horrigan wonders if that kind of resiliency can be taught to soldiers with less remarkable resources of character and courage than Gen. Cornum. He concludes with the thought, “If the Army can teach them resiliency, so much the better. Maybe they can teach it to the rest of us.”
References
Augsburger, D. (1986). Pastoral counseling across cultures. Philadelphia: The Westminster.
Baldwin, S. A., Williams, D. C., & Houts, A. C. (2004). The Creation, Expansion, and Embodiment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Case Study in Historical Critical Psychopathology. The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice: Objective Investigations of Controversial and Unorthodox Claims in Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, and Social Work.
Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., & Sullivan, W. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life.
Berger, P. L. (1977). Facing up to modernity: Excursions in society, politics, and religion. New York: Basic Books.
Bernstein, R. J. (1976). The restructuring of social and political theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bishop, R. (2007). The philosophy of the social sciences. New York: Continuum.
Brooks, D. (2012). The age of possibility. The New York Times. Retrieved Nov 15, 2012 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/opinion/brooks-the-age-of-possibility.
Clegg, J. J. (2013) Institutionalization and expansionism in the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals (DSM). Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Honolulu.
Cushman, P. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45(5), 599–611. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.45.5.599.
Cushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America. Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Doherty, W. (1995). Soul searching: Why psychotherapy must promote moral responsibility. New York: Basic Books.
Downing, J. N. (2000). Between conviction and uncertainty: Philosophical guidelines for the practicing psychotherapist. Albany: SUNY.
Etzioni, A. (1996). The new golden rule: Community and morality in a democratic society. New York: Basic Books.
Fancher, R. (1995). Cultures of healing: Correcting the image of American mental health care. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Fowers, B. (2005). Virtue and psychology: Pursuing excellence in ordinary practices. Washington, DC: APA Press Books.
Fowers, B. J. (2010). Instrumentalism and psychology: Beyond using and being used. Theory and Psychology, 20(1), 102–124. doi:10.1177/0959354309346080.
Frances, A. (2013). DSM in the country of philosophy. Aut Aut, (357), 99–112.
Gadamer, H. G. (1989). Truth and method, second revised edition (J. Weinsheimer & D. Marshall, Trans.). New York: Crossroad.
Gottlieb, L. (2011). How to land your kid in therapy. The Atlantic Magazine, 308, 64.
Greenberg, G. (2010). Manufacturing depression. The secret history of a modern disease. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Greenberg, G. (2013). The book of woe: The DSM and the unmaking of psychiatry. New York: Blue Rider Press.
Guignon, C. B. (1993). Authenticity, moral values, & psychotherapy. In C. B. Guignon (Ed.), Cambridge companion to Heidegger (pp. 215–239). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Habermas, J. (1973). Theory and practice. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1991). The philosophical discourse of modernity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Hacking, I. (2002). Historical ontology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Harrist, R. S., & Richardson, F. C. (2012). Disguised ideologies in counseling and social justice work. Counseling and Values, 57, 38–44. doi:10.1002/j.2161-007X.2012.00006.x.
Held, D. (1980). Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Horkheimer, M. (1974). Critique of instrumental reason: Lectures and essays since the end of world war II. New York: Seabury Press.
Horowitz, A., Wakefield, J., & Spitzer, R. (2012). The loss of sadness: how psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kindlon, D. (2003). Too much of a good thing: Raising children of character in an indulgent age. New York: Miramax.
Kohut, H. (1977). The restoration of the self. New York: International Universities Press Inc.
Lane, C. (2007). Shyness: How normal behavior became a sickness. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lowe, C. (1969). Value orientations in counseling and psychotherapy: The meanings of mental health. Cranston: Carroll.
McCarthy, T. A. (1978). The critical theory of Jürgen habermas. Cambridge: MIT Press.
McGruder, J. H. (1999). Madness in Zanzibar: “Schizophrenia” in three families in the “developing” world. ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing.
Mehta, S., & Farina, A. (1997). Is being “sick” really better? Effect of the disease view of mental disorder on stigma. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16(4), 405–419. doi:10.1521/jscp.1997.16.4.405.
Menand, L. (2010). Head case: Can psychiatry be a science? The New Yorker.
Pilecki, B. C., Clegg, J. W., & McKay, D. (2011). The influence of corporate and political interests on models of illness in the evolution of the DSM. European Psychiatry : The Journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 26(3), 194–200. doi:10.1016/j.eurpsy.2011.01.005.
Rechtman, R. (2004). The rebirth of PTSD: The rise of a new paradigm in psychiatry. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 39(11), 913–915. doi:10.1007/s00127-004-0874-x.
Richardson, F. C. (2011). A hermeneutic perspective on dialogical psychology. Culture & Psychology, 17(4), 462–472. doi:10.1177/1354067X11418544.
Richardson, F. C. (2012). On psychology and virtue ethics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 32(1), 24–34. doi:10.1037/a0026058.
Richardson, F. C., Fowers, B., & Guignon, C. B. (1999). Re-envisioning psychology: Moral dimensions of theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Richardson, F. C., Rogers, A., & McCarroll, J. (1998). Toward a dialogical self. American Behavioral Scientist, 41(4), 496–515. doi:10.1177/0002764298041004004.
Richardson, F. C., & Zeddies, T. J. (2004). Psychoanalysis and the good life. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 40, 617–658.
Rieff, P. (1968). The triumph of the therapeutic: Uses of faith after freud. New York: Harper & Row.
Sandel, M. (1996). Democracy’s discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schumaker, J. (2001). The age of insanity: Modernity and mental health. Westport: Praeger.
Schwartz, B. (2004). The paradox of choice: Why more is less. New York: ECCO.
Slife, B. (2012). Virtue ethics in practice: The Greenbrier Academy. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 32(1), 35–42. doi:10.1037/a0026443.
Stroebe, M., Gergen, M. M., Gergen, K. J., & Stroebe, W. (1992). Broken hearts or broken bonds: Love and death in historical perspective. The American Psychologist, 47(10), 1205–1212. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.47.10.1205.
Sugarman, J. (2009). Historical ontology and psychological description. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 29(1), 5–15. doi:10.1037/a0015301.
Sullivan, W. (1986). Reconstructing public philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Summerfield, D. (2001). The invention of post-traumatic stress disorder and the social usefulness of a psychiatric category. British Medical Journal, 322(7278), 95–98. doi:10.1136/bmj.322.7278.95.
Summerfield, D. (2006). Depression: Epidemic or pseudo-epidemic? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 99(3), 161–162. doi:10.1258/jrsm.99.3.161.
Taylor, C. (1985). Social theory as practice. Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers (Vol. 2). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Taylor, C. (1995). Philosophical arguments. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Tocqueville, A. (1969). Democracy in America. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. (Original work published in 1835.).
Warnke, G. (1987). Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Watters, E. (2010a). Crazy like us: The globalization of the American psyche. New York: Free.
Watters, E. (2010b). The Americanization of mental illness. The New York Times.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Harrist, R.S., Richardson, F.C. Pathologizing the Normal, Individualism, and Virtue Ethics. J Contemp Psychother 44, 201–211 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-013-9255-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-013-9255-7