Michel Foucault and the critique of psychiatry

Abstract

This thesis argues that a metaphysical unease pervades the project of psychiatry, and that a philosophically fruitful way of examining this unease is through the work of Michel Foucault. My claim is that in highlighting the critique of certain philosophies of the human sciences that Foucault maintains throughout his work, we can come to a comprehensive understanding of the open philosophical questions that rest at the heart of any contemporary psychiatric project. In the first part of this thesis, I argue that there are three essential epistemic problems, implicitly highlighted by Foucault, that form the grounds on which a psychiatric knowledge is built. These are the "subjectivity problem," the "separation problem," and the "conceptual problem." In the second part of this thesis, I argue that these epistemological problems have ontological, political, and ethical consequences. Ontological problems for psychiatry arise when I interrogate the techniques and technologies that give psychiatry an empirical foundation, as well as the manner in which they target life through creating bodies and modes of being. Political problems arise for psychiatry when individuals question the nature of their diagnosis, and the manner in which it identifies them. Ethical problems arise from the manner in which psychiatric diagnoses function within our political and juridical systems and is one of central concern to psychiatry and its patients, yet a dimension that is elided in many conceptualisations of the role and function of psychiatry. This thesis reaches three key conclusions. Firstly, that psychiatry is a discourse and discipline that is wider than the parts of it that function as a science, and that trying to conceptualise the nature of the whole through the scientific idealisation of its parts is unhelpful. Secondly, that psychiatric knowledge cannot be separated from its practice, or the other roles and functions that psychiatry performs within our society. Thirdly, that psychiatry can have no fixed nature or utopian state, and that there are essential compromises involved in the way in which we choose to conceptualise it as a form of knowledge and as a social practice. Fixing the nature of psychiatry as scientific or otherwise threatens to place the fundamental philosophical questions of epistemology, ontology, politics, or ethics beyond further argument or consideration and close off broader discussion. My contention is that the work of Foucault assists us in clearing a space for new images of psychiatry and, more importantly, its broader discussion within our communities.