Lawrie Reznek addresses these questions and more in his controversial investigation of the insanity defense in Evil or Ill? Drawing from countless intriguing case examples, he aims to understand the concept of an excuse, and explains why the law excuses certain actions and not others. In his easily accessible and elegant style, he explains that in law, there exists two excuses derived from Aristotle: the excuses of ignorance and compulsion. Reznek, however proposes a third excuse - the excuse of character change. In introducing this third excuse, Reznek raises a controversial possibility - the abolition of the insanity defence.
Psychiatry is a mess. Patients who urgently need help go untreated, while perfectly healthy people are over-diagnosed with serious mental disorders and receive unnecessary medical treatment. The roots of the problem are the vast pharmaceutical industry profits and a diagnostic system--the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)--vulnerable to exploitation. Drug companies have fostered the development of this system, pushing psychiatry to over-extend its domain so that more people can be diagnosed with mental disorders and treated with drugs. This book describes the steady expansion of the DSM--both the manual itself and its application--and the resulting over-medication of society. The author discusses revisions and additions to the DSM (now in its fifth edition) that have only deepened the epidemics of major depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, social anxiety disorder, attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder.
We all think that we can tell the difference between someone who is mad, or whom psychiatrists call psychotic, and someone who is sane. But can we really tell who is mad and who is not? Do we really know what madness is and how it should be recognized? Have psychiatrists made a sensible distinction between the patient who believes that aliens are beaming messages to him from a foreign planet, and the religious fanatic who believes God communicates to him via automatic writing? Is there a difference between the paranoid patient who believes that the FBI is after him, and the sizeable proportion of our normal population that believe that the US government orchestrated the 9-11 bombings? Here, Reznek hopes to shed light on the delusions of the masses-those delusions that are common to everyday people living so-called ordinary lives. He provides an understanding of madness and the psychological processes that drive us to adopt delusions, arguing that it is a mistake to view only schizophrenic patients as delusional, while excluding large groups of society from such an analysis. If we abandon the idea that whole communities cannot share a delusion, we can come to a better understanding about why the world is such a dangerous place.
By first analysing the arguments of psychiatry's critics and the philosophical ideas of such thinkers as Freud, Eysenck, Laing, Szasz, Sedgwick and Foucault and by then providing answers to the many contentious and diverse questions raised, Dr. Reznek aims to establish a philosophical defence of the theory and practice of psychiatry. As both a qualified philosopher and psychiatrist, the author is exceptionally p[laced to undertake the examination of a subject which has hitherto remained untackled. It will be easily accessible to a wide variety of non-specialists as well. It will be of specific interest to those involved in the practice of philosophy, psychiatry, clinical psychology, social work and psychiatric nursing.
Originally published in 1987, this book is about the classification of bodily conditions into diseases. It provides a full account of the concept of disease, examining the issue of whether disease status is something we discover or invent and the issue of whether disease attributions involve implicit value judgements. It investigates whether bodily conditions fall into natural kinds and whether these debates can be settled by discovering whether there are any natural boundaries dividing conditions into diseases and non-diseases. It considers whether the notion of disease is an evaluative notion or whether judgements about disease status are purely descriptive. The issue of whether other cultures with different values are justified in making different disease judgements is also discussed.
According to the author, there is an alarming inclination for people to succumb to delusional thinking. Contrary to popular opinion, such thought processes are not limited to the mentally ill. Instead, there is growing evidence to show that large segments of the public harbor a wide variety of delusions, none of which are innocent, and many of which are pushing our societies to the brink of war. This book aims to understand the nature of delusions and how they are generated. By providing a deeper understanding of delusions, the author challenges the assumption that a whole community cannot be deluded, concluding that even very large groups of people can be considered collectively mad. Reznek offers case studies of madness both in individuals and in society throughout the book, relieving the reader of requiring a first-hand experience of psychosis, and revealing the nature of delusions as they affect us all.
Was the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer an evil man responsible for his murders? Or was he an innocent victim of psychiatric illness? Lawrie Reznek addresses these questions and more in his controve rsial investigation of the insanity defence.
Psychiatry is a mess. Patients who urgently need help go untreated, while perfectly healthy people are over-diagnosed with serious mental disorders and receive unnecessary medical treatment. The roots of the problem are the vast pharmaceutical industry profits and a diagnostic system--the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)--vulnerable to exploitation. Drug companies have fostered the development of this system, pushing psychiatry to over-extend its domain so that more people can be diagnosed with mental disorders and treated with drugs. This book describes the steady expansion of the DSM--both the manual itself and its application--and the resulting over-medication of society. The author discusses revisions and additions to the DSM (now in its fifth edition) that have only deepened the epidemics of major depression, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, social anxiety disorder, attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder.
Originally published in 1987, this book is about the classification of bodily conditions into diseases. It provides a full account of the concept of disease, examining the issue of whether disease status is something we discover or invent and the issue of whether disease attributions involve implicit value judgements. It investigates whether bodily conditions fall into natural kinds and whether these debates can be settled by discovering whether there are any natural boundaries dividing conditions into diseases and non-diseases. It considers whether the notion of disease is an evaluative notion or whether judgements about disease status are purely descriptive. The issue of whether other cultures with different values are justified in making different disease judgements is also discussed.
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