The Metaphor of Mental Illness

by Neil Pickering

Overview

Despite the currency of the notion of mental illness, its legal and medical legitimacy, and the panoply of psychiatry and other mental health services which claim to treat it, there are those who take the radical sceptical line that mental illness is a fabrication. This is a book which takes this sceptical line seriously - perhaps more seriously than almost any other book not written by sceptics themselves. The Metaphor of Mental Illness is a revaluation of the traditional philosophical disputes about the existence and nature of mental illness. Sceptics and apologists have generally focused on the legitimacy of extending illness from the physical to the mental, by means of the likeness argument. This says that claimed mental illnesses, from ADHD to schizophrenia, really are illnesses providing they are sufficiently similar to agreed physical illnesses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198530886
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/26/2006
Series:	International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	9.22(w) x 6.26(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Neil Pickering is a lecturer in the Bioethics Centre of the Dunedin School of Medicine, at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He has a PhD from the University of Wales. He teaches on undergraduate and graduate bioethics programmes at Otago. His primary research interests are in the philosophy of medicine (in particular the nature of disease and the nature and existence mental illness), medical humanities (where he has written on the use of poetry to teach ethics) and alternative medicine. Member of the Executive Committee of the Australasian Bioethics Association, and an Associate Editor of Journal of Bioethical Inquiry and of Medical Humanities Edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: the categorical argumentPart I - Answering Radical Questions2. The likeness argument3. The categorical argumentPart II - Metaphor4. Metaphor5. Two metaphors from physical medicinePart III - The Metaphor of Mental Illness6. The metaphor of mental illness7. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, social construction, and metaphor8. Metaphors and models9. Conclusions

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: William Miles, MD (Rush University Medical Center)
Description: This paperback book discusses the ever-topical argument that mental illness is a fallacy and that the field of psychiatry has no scientific validity. This apparently is the first edition.
Purpose: According to the author, the book's purpose is to argue that the answer to the question "Does mental illness exist?" is in fact "yes", as long as certain conditions are met. This is certainly a timely and worthy objective, and the author is successful in answering the question.
Audience: According to the author, the book is targeted to anyone, professional or layperson, who is interested in this topic. I would agree, since the book can be read by most anyone; formal training in medicine or psychiatry is not required.
Features: The book is divided into three parts. Part One discusses two arguments commonly used by psychiatrists (myself included) to "prove" to students, patients, and skeptics that mental illnesses are valid and comparable to other illnesses such as diabetes. The author manages to find weaknesses in these arguments, but I found "weaknesses in his weaknesses". Part Two discusses the concept of metaphors, and explains in quite cogent and sound arguments what a metaphor is and how it applies to the human condition. Part Three carries the metaphor discussion into the realm of psychiatry, and discusses how certain disorders, when applying the metaphor model, may not be valid in comparison to other disease states such as heart disease.
Assessment: This book was certainly an interesting read, and the author attempts to take a truly neutral position on whether or not mental illness actually exists. I found his arguments to be sound in many regards, but quite flawed in others. Still, as a practicing psychiatrist, I will admit to my own bias, as I truly believe in the validity of mental illness, and this may have skewed my appreciation of the author's arguments. If anything, this book would help a mental-health worker understand the points-of-view of "non-believers". Still, as a clinician and educator of future physicians, I feel that arguing against the validity of psychiatric illness diminishes the suffering of our patients.

Doody's Review Service

"This book was certainly an interesting read, and the author attempts to take a truly neutral position on whether or not mental illness actually exists."—Doody's

"This is a well-written stimulating book which addresses important issues that should be thought about and questioned by clinicians and researchers in all fields of psychiatry."—Psychological Medicine

From the Publisher