Abstract
Developed along an extraordinarily creative life, Rom Harré ’s views on both the natural and social sciences can also illuminate the problems of Psychiatry . Constructed during the early 19th century, Psychiatry was from the start a hybrid discipline , that is, a conceptual cento made from fragments taken from philosophy, history, psychology, rhetoric, the nascent sociology and the neurosciences. Pulled in all directions by the very disciplines that once lent it support, Psychiatry still yearns to develop its proprietary epistemology (Berrios and Marková in Re-visioning psychiatry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 41–64, 2016). As his doctoral supervisee at Oxford , I learnt from Rom that the first step when dealing with the epistemological teething troubles of an inchoate discipline is to identify the models (Rothbart in Modeling: gateway to the unknown. A work by Rom Harré. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2004) and powers (Harré in Dispositions. Reidel, Dordrecht, pp 211–233, 1970) that help it to legitimize its claims and activities. As an homage to this quasi-eternal thinker, I will outline one aspect of the work carried out by the Epistemology of Psychiatry Group in Cambridge that connects well with Rom’s ideas, namely the conceptualization of ‘mental illness’.
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Notes
- 1.
On the general philosophical background in France during the 19th century see: Brooks III, J I: The Eclectic Legacy: Academic Philosophy and the Human Sciences in Nineteenth-Century France, London: Associated University Presses, 1998.
- 2.
In a bookstall Royer-Collard found a copy of the French Translation of Thomas Reid’s ‘Essays’ and this provided him with the ideas with which to oppose Condillac, at the time the predominant philosophical influence in France. (p108, de Barante M: La Vie Politique de M. Royer-Collard. Ses discours et ses Écrits. Vol 1, Paris: Didier, 1861).
- 3.
Condillac read Locke in the translation of Pierre Coste and developed his own version of Lockean empiricism (Le Roy G: La Psychologie de Condillac. Paris: Boivin, 1937).
- 4.
Sydenham T: The works of Thomas Sydenham MD. 2 Vols. London Printed for the Sydenham Society, 1848. Sydenham’s approach has been called more botanico, i.e. ‘in the fashion of botany’ and was firmly held by 18th century nosologists (see: López Piñero JJ: Historical Origins of the concept of Neuroses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 15.
- 5.
On Linné’s epigram: ‘Symptomata se habent ad morbum ut folia et fulcra ad plantam’, Pinel commented: ‘The revolution brought about by Linné in natural history, together with the introduction of a method to offer descriptions that be short and exact, could not but greatly influence medicine’. (p. lxxxiv, Pinel Ph: Nosographie Philosophique. Vol 1, 5th Edition. Paris: Brosson, 1813).
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Berrios, G.E. (2019). Psychiatry as a Hybrid Discipline. In: Christensen, B. (eds) The Second Cognitive Revolution. Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26680-6_12
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