When is behavior an illness?
Posted on 14/10/2010 | 1 Comments
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Cheating clearly has adaptive value and in evolutionary terms probably has an evolutionary advantage. It happens in every society that I know of and I would not be surprised if it is common behavior in animals, particularly primates. So what does this say about how we think about “normal” behavior and “illness”?Blog Tag Cloud
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This is a great set of comments and rings very true.
I totally agree that scientists (just like everyone else) have their biases and foibles. After all, scientists are human beings too! But science is different than scientists.
The scientific method is the most objective frame that we have by which to evaluate and predict. Science is not about finding truth. It is only about being less wrong most of the time. The scientific method (experimental design and mathematics) gives us the ability to test what we believe. The scientific method is not used to prove something is correct, on the contrary, the scientific method is designed to prove that something is not correct! It is designed to test what is called the “null hypothesis”. It takes ideas that come out of left field (or wherever else they come from) and puts those ideas to an independent test.
t does not drive our beliefs. It does however challenge our beliefs. In that way it is self-correcting. Of course scientific inquiry and understanding lives within a wider social context. That is one of the great features of science.
But gravity is gravity, social context notwithstanding. And thus it is nasty, brutish and long. As Brecht said, (something like this) - the purpose of science is to save us from everlasting error.
By Christina Carew on May 11th
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What people are saying?
Kelly S said...
“Words, like the chisel of the carver, can create what never existed before rather than simply describe what already exists. As a man speaks, not only is the thing which he is declaring coming into existence, but also the man himself.” -Martin Heidegger
The problem with “carving points” in terms of determining if somebody is “mentally ill” or “mentally well” is that it gets right at the heart of a person’s identity. When a person is diagnosed with a “mental illness”, she not only gets the diagnosis but the dominant discourses that go with it (the “mentally ill” are manipulative, weak, don’t have insight, will never be cured, must comply with treatment etc.). One’s identity is being constructed in a disempowering fashion. And for the rest of that individual’s life, the person labelled “mentally ill” might feel like they belong to an exclusive club that they don’t want to belong to.
I’m not saying that people don’t have problems and that professionals can’t provide tools to help cope with them. But putting people into powerless identity categories (with all the stories that go with them, like it or not) is often not helpful and may create self-fulfilling prophecies.
I am wondering if professionals can use language in such a way that addresses people’s problems with living AND empowers people.
This deficit-based and pathologizing language is only serving the needs of professionals, not clients. By changing the language, we might help to change the discourses surrounding persons who have been diagnosed with mental illnesses.
Comment made on November 04th, 2010
What do you think?