Post-Kantian European Philosophy Seminar (Tuesday - Week 8, HT25)
Tuesday 11 March, 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Ryle Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Fabian Freyenhagen (Essex University): 'The History of Madness Revisited: A Foucault-inspired Critical History of Our Psychiatric Present'
Abstract: The aim of this talk is to call into question the official story about the bio-medical paradigm in psychiatry that is socially dominant today. For this, I will draw on Foucault’s critical reflections about the birth of psychiatry (ca. 1790s) to rethink the re-birth of psychiatry post-1980, suggesting that there are certain uncanny parallels. I will also draw on other key resources from his work to scrutinise the change represented by the publication of the DSM-III. I disclose how in this shift progress and regress have been deeply entangled, including how the pairing of normal-pathological became reconceptualised. As a result of this entanglement, our societies hamper their own efforts in addressing the contemporary societal challenge of rising mental distress. We need to understand how we got there, and how else we could proceed, such that we are not governed as much. The hoped-for result will be to contribute towards freeing us from the icy grip of pathologising (and medicalising) distress; and enabling greater imagination and practical experimentation for responding in less normalising and individualising ways to this distress, focusing instead on social ills.
