Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry

ISBN-13: 9780521546669 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 220 str.

Andrew Lakoff

Opis

When a French biotechnology company seeks patients in Buenos Aires with bipolar disorder for its gene discovery program, they have unexpected trouble finding enough subjects for the study. In Argentina, the predominant form of mental health expertise psychoanalysis does not recognize the legitimacy of bipolar disorder as a diagnostic entity. This problem points to a broader set of political and epistemological debates in global psychiatry. Drawing from an ethnography of psychiatric practice in Buenos Aires, Andrew Lakoff follows the contested extension of novel techniques for understanding and intervening in mental illness. He charts the globalization of the new biomedical psychiatry, and illustrates the clashes, conflicts, alliances, and reformulations that take place when psychoanalytic and biological models of illness and cure meet. Highlighting the social and political implications that new forms of expertise about human behavior and thought bring, Lakoff presents an arresting case study that will appeal to scholars and students alike."

Recenzje

'…a substantial contribution to the sociology of psychiatry. It is as essential as those by Estroff, Barrett and Karp. I can only hope it will be read not only by sociologists or anthropologists, but also by students on their way to becoming psychiatrists.' Journal of BioSocieties

Spis treści

Introduction: specific effects; 1. Diagnostic liquidity; 2. Medicating the symptom; 3. The Lacan ward; 4. Living with neuroscience; 5. The private life of numbers; Conclusion: the segmented phenotype.