The end of drugging children

Toward the genealogy of the ADHD subject

Bibliographic Data

ID4801831
AuthorsEdward J Comstock (American University, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume47
Issue1
Pages44-69
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/jhbs.20471
PMID21207489
OpenAlexW2043654133
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited55

This genealogy of the ADHD subject will demonstrate that over the course of the twentieth century a new relation between power, knowledge, the body, and ethical practices of self-formation emerged around the ADHD-type in ways that are not captured by the received critical perspective. By examining the history of knowledge and practices surrounding the ADHD-type, this work will argue that the deviant subject that was located relative to external institutional moral/juridical values or standards is replaced over the course of the century by a new intelligibility of rational self-management. A further analysis of this emergent intelligibility attempts to advance the critical understanding of the increasingly prevalent ADHD phenomenon by showing how novel drug and brain imaging technologies work to link behaviors to identity, establishing new relations of power to the subject not captured by the received medicalization perspective. This work will be of interest to anybody interested in the relations among knowledge, drugs, power, and the ADHD subject. (c) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Identity (music) · Medicalization · Perspective (graphical) · Power (physics) · Psychiatry · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Neurology and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology