← Back to Concept Indexclinical-objectivity-critique
A critique of the traditional clinical psychiatric stance that claims neutrality, arguing that interpretation is always influenced by the observer's perspective and relationship with the patient.
1 chapter across 1 book
CHAPTER II The existential-phenomenological foundations for the understanding of psychosis There is a further characteristic of the current psychiatric jargon. It speaks of psychosis as a social or biological failure of adjustment, or ma/-adaptation of a particularly radical kind, of loss of contact with reality, of lack of insight. As Van den Berg (1955) has said, this jargon is a veritable Vocabulary of denigration’. The deni¬ gration is not moralistic, at least in a nineteenth-century sense; in fact, in many ways this language is the outcome of efforts to avoid thinking in terms of freedom, choice, responsibility. But it implies a certain standard way of being human to which the psychotic cannot measure up. I do not, in fact, object to all the implications in this Vocabulary of denigration’. Indeed, I feel we should be more frank about the judgements we implicitly make when we call someone psychotic. When I certify someone insane, I am not equivocating when I write that he is of unsound mind, may be dangerous to himself and others, and requires care and attention in a mental hospital. However, at the same time, I am also aware that, in my opinion, there are other people who are regarded as sane, whose minds are as radically unsound, who may be equally or more dangerous to themselves and others, and whom society does not regard as psychotic and fit persons to be 27This chapter critiques the prevailing psychiatric jargon that frames psychosis as a failure of adjustment or loss of reality contact, arguing that such language implicitly enforces a normative standard of humanity and avoids acknowledging freedom and responsibility. Laing highlights the relational and interpretive nature of psychiatric diagnosis, emphasizing that what is seen as symptoms or signs of disease is inseparable from the psychiatrist's interaction and perspective. Through the example of Kraepelin's catatonic patient, the chapter illustrates how psychotic behavior can be understood existentially as expressive of the patient's lived experience rather than merely pathological signs.