Take Back Our Subjectivity
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Take Back Our Subjectivity

17 Feb Take Back Our Subjectivity

Posted at 01:00h in Critical psychiatry, DSM-5, Human Development, Language, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Psychology of Becoming, Psychotherapy by

February 16, 2012

In yesterday’s Huffington Post,  Dr. Eric Maisel asks, “Does Depression Exist?” Why’s he asking?

To show that sometimes what we call things can create false realities. To invite readers to consider that this is what’s happened to our mental life and our feelings. To add a critical political/philosophical dimension to the current DSM-5 debate. (Note: This is what I think; I haven’t asked Dr. Maisel why he’s asking, but I intend to.)

Here’s the opening to his very fine essay:

If you call your daughter “my little petunia,” does calling her that make her a flower? No, it doesn’t.

If you call your wife “the little woman,” does calling her that mean that she is no longer six feet tall in her stockinged feet? No, it doesn’t.

If you call your anguish “the mental disorder of depression,” does calling it that make it a “mental disorder”? No, it doesn’t.

Maisel goes on to expose the linguistic trick by which nearly every unpleasant life experience is turning into pathology. They then have the look of illness, even though the claim that they’re disorders doesn’t pass any established scientific test of illness.

To go further with what this essay introduces, I think we have to ask, “How did it happen? How did it come to pass that we let our feelings and thoughts become pathological and medicalized? How come what’s happening with us emotionally speaking (including how we understand these happenings) is institutionally mediated?

I invite you to ask these questions of mental health providers you know and see if they have any idea. And to find out yourself if you don’t already know (there are many books on the subject, not just those by Fred Newman and me —just do a Google search.)

If we want to take back our subjectivity, then we need to get smarter about how mainstream psychology and psychiatry took it away from us.

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4 Comments
  • loisholzman
    Posted at 19:49h, 21 February

    Thanks for your thoughts on this. I agree 100%—it’s a great injustice to, as you say, body, mind,spirit and community.

  • loisholzman
    Posted at 19:47h, 21 February

    Thanks for this, Tony.

  • Tony G. Rocco
    Posted at 17:35h, 21 February

    Join his fan page on Facebook called Rethinking Depression. You can correspond with him and get all his articles.

    Tony

  • Dr Michael Roberts, Cultural Anthropologist
    Posted at 17:15h, 21 February

    Good to see this discussion up and running.
    In Irish and many other cultural traditions to name is to create. Nothing exists unless it is named and sustained by a narrative construction.
    By talking about stress, distress and trauma as forms of ‘mental illness’ we open the gate to have this construction accepted as fact instead of metaphor and simile.
    We have to change the language we use if we want to change our accepted mis-understandings. ‘Experts’ are good at mistaken construction. They claim the power to name and sustain their impressions, often backing them up with equally mistaken research.
    To limit ‘depression’ to a medical or psychological discipline is to do it a great injustice. It take a co-ordinated and compre-hensive multi-disciplinary (body, mind, spirit and community) approach to get us to sound conclusions. Such reseach must be supervided by a very open-minded supervisor, not on limited by a single discipline, no matter how ‘scientific’ that discipline is.

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