Madness & Civilisation thread

Do you agree with this book's argument?
Do you think mentally ill people have been treated inhumanely throughout history?
Do you think psychiatry is a flawed field of study morally?

(pic related is my copy)

Bump.

I've never read it but isn't it just that most "mental illness" is a social construct and the combination of state force and that psychiatrists will always find something "problematic" to "fix" as long as it's profitable for them to keep creating new mental illnesses

It was 2 dense 4 me to read, but it boils down to how mentally ill people were at times better treated in the past because they were accepted or even praised for the eccentricities whilst giving free permission to roam in society - right? Meanwhile we today just lock people up and tell them they're not normal and need to change?
Have I got that right?

I'm so I haven't read it either, but just to comment on this any way: I think if so, Foucault might be somewhat outdated today. A lot has happened in the field in the last couple of decades even. When I myself sought psychiatric help I was constantly told it's for me to decide what I want help with, and that it isn't in itself wrong to live in any certain way as long as I myself don't consider it an issue I want to overcome. I got quite the opposite feeling from them seeing anything as problematic and in need of a fix. It's an issue when you feel it's an issue.

And I think people put too much thought into diagnosis. Yes, almost everyone can be found to have one. It doesn't mean they need psychiatric help or that they're not normal. Nor does it mean diagnosis are meaningless - it's just a way for the psychiatrists to be able to label things to ease their work. It shouldn't mean a lot to the person being diagnosed. You're not your diagnosis. You're you, and our identity and functioning are far more complex than that.
I think people just love labels secretly. Oh I'm borderline. I'm INTP. I'm a Radiohead-fan.

Yes, that's basically it. I'm not too far into it, but that's definitely what I'm getting from it.

>Foucault might be somewhat outdated today

Well, not really. The reason Foucault was against the field of psychiatry is because depending on the prevalent culture it can be used to 'demonise' certain individuals (for example, gays in the past by labelling it a mental illness).

Well who are we demonizing today?

Well, no one in the West I suppose, but it's not about what the field of Psychiatry does today, it's about what it has the potential to do depending on the type of government in charge.

He argues that it could be used as an enforcing body to, and I hate to use this term, oppress some people.

Whites are demonised in the media today by the regressive Left all the time. That may not have much to do with Psychiatry, but you get his point.

Donald Trump

>lmao
>Insofar as you consider the treatment (e.g., electroshock therapy, lobotomies) to detain them to be cruel. I would also say that some of the ideas that Foucault is pointing out is that the institutionalization and pathologization of mental illnesses came to be with the rise of the Enlightenment and capitalist society. However, he does miss the point that this, for the most part, remains a relatively recent and generally Western phenomena. Other civilizations in history have revered people with mental illnesses and assumed that they were Godlike. This is not to romanticize the lifestyle they lived, but rather to expose the reification of certain ideological presuppositions pervading many Industrialized, Western cultures.
>Insofar as it may be used as a mode of disciplining its societal members and normalizing a particular set of attributes. It also makes the justification of violence a lot more tolerable as well as the catalyzing dehumanization process the State can inflict on its subjects.

Well... yes, of course. I suppose that's worth being pointed out, but it seems fairly obvious.
>Whites are demonised in the media today by the regressive Left all the time.
Lol no you're not.

His argument would then be that we today have it well by having had this movement of acceptance and non-oppression. So if you want to agree with Foucault you should stop visiting /pol/, user.

no, that's not the argument. Greatly, greatly simplifying, the argument is that, since something isn't considered and illness unless it effects a person's functioning in their day to day lives, and since how somebody functions in their day to day life is partly affected by society and their social surroundings, what gets counted as mental illness is in some way determined by the particularities of society.

But the book is probably better known for Foucault's method of genealogical research than it is as a study of mental illness.

trans ppl? hard to say bc internet and mainstream culture are so different yet intermixed these days user

I don't really agree with Foucault, but I have been considering his arguments on power as of late.

And yes, we are constantly demonised in the media, user.

Muslims
Blacks
Latinos
Queers
Non-abled bodied people
Native Americans
Working class individuals

>Muslims

Are you serious? The media is extremely pro-Islam.

>Blacks

That's why Blacks Lives Matter aren't considered a terrorist group and everyone is in fear of point out black-on-black crime, correct?

>Queers

Gays are a protected class. I can't criticise one for something unrelated to homosexuality without being called homophobic.

>Non-abled bodied people

What's with the extremely PC terminology, lad?

The definition of mental illnesses is abnormality. Norms are socially/culturally contingent. Therefore mental illness and its treatment has changed over the centuries. For better or worse? I think that would be a complicated historical debate.

You're seeing what you want to see because it's all so comforting playing the victim, isn't it?

lol this post is the only kek ive gotten out of Veeky Forums in a few days

I'm not playing the victim. I'm not calling for handouts or saying I'm oppressed like the regressive Left are, but it's hard to deny that there is certainly an anti-white sentiment in the media. It's all around you really.

Take police brutality, for example. The media will spin it to make it look like white officers kill blacks for their skin colour.

The media said George Zimmerman was white even though he was hispanic.

It's always evil whitey vs poor black man.

The problem with trying to argue that nowadays we demonize people for mental illness (or whatever) is that in this day and age, where people create their own niche communities in the internet, they start thinking and creating a view where people are demonized to play the victim.

In internet social circle A, people with long legs get together and they create a worldview where they are the victims and try to make the oppressor/oppressed dialectic. The opressors might be short legged people and they point out all the injustice that they have done through history to them.

Internet social circle B does the same, but from the other point of view. In the end we are left with two conflicting point of views were none is what society as a whole believes, because we can't identify what the majority thinks.

Today, people believe that both whites and blacks, hetero and homosexuals, etc... are oppressed (or demonized) and there is media to feed both of these groups ideologies, so I would say that society doesn't particularly demonize either, but it all boils down to what you want to believe (sadly). No objectivity in this day and age, because that would damage the pillars of what you have decided as a world view.

>I can't criticise one for something unrelated to homosexuality without being called homophobic.

Of course you can. Are you meaning to tell me that you truly believe that you can't criticise a gay man for ANYTHING unrelated to his specific sexuality without being called homophobic? You couldn't even criticise a gay man for driving drunk for example without being called homophobic?

You are delusional.

Well, maybe I've just been trying it with the wrong type of gay then.

Whenever I call out a feminine gay man out on his shit unrelated to homosexuality I get called a homophobe.

Mate that is probably because you are just a bit of a cunt. If we are going to be real here.

And why would you need to call a feminine gay man out on "his shit"? How does him being feminine somehow fuck with you personally?

Leave them be, bro. Work on finding your own happiness.

What? I'm not saying I am abusing these people for being gay.

I'm just talking about any debate at all, really. It's very hard to avoid being called a homophobe in the presence of a feminine gay, same as it is difficult to avoid being called "racist" for criticising Islam.

>It's very hard to avoid being called a homophobe in the presence of a feminine gay

Because merely being in their presence would prompt you to say something or do something?

I don't understand.

Couldn't agree more.

You're just an edgy dick, mate.

No, it's that getting into any kind of debate with them will eventually lead you to being called a homophobe in my experience.

Nice argument there.

>muh non-specific anecdotal evidence
You too

Well then, can you explain how I could prove it to you empirically?

It is not as if there is a study on how many times in a debate individuals get called a homophobe on average.