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39 - Psychiatry

from PART IV - SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Elizabeth Lunbeck
Edited by
Theodore M. Porter  and
Dorothy Ross
Theodore M. Porter
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Dorothy Ross
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Summary

Psychiatry, a branch of medicine, is a discipline that historically has taken severe mental illness as its object. In the course of the twentieth century, it dramatically expanded its purview, bringing the full range of human behaviors, both normal and pathological, within its domain. By the end of the century, psychiatry dealt with problems in everyday living as well as with schizophrenia and depression. It had become, as psychiatrists sometimes put it, “as broad as life.” In the process, it had also moved into the domain of the social and behavioral sciences. This essay will examine that expansion, focusing primarily on American psychiatry.

Unstably situated between genetics and biology on the one hand and the behavioral sciences – psychology, sociology, anthropology – on the other, psychiatry uniquely bridges medicine and the disciplines. Its practitioners take into account “everything from the molecular level to the most basic social issues.” They disagree, sometimes vehemently, on its goals, practices, and fundamental truths. Equally important to its instability, psychiatry has been thoroughly remade during the twentieth century. This remaking has fostered an eclecticism that is often interpreted as fragmentation, with psychiatrists advocating a broad range of conflicting models of behavior and disease. The remaking has also fostered a curious relationship between psychiatrists and their discipline’s history, with some taking pride in its ancient roots and others willing to jettison them and proclaim their discipline altogether new. “What is psychiatry?” has seemed to many a pressing question throughout the twentieth century.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 663 - 677
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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