Psychiatry, naivete, and the politics of dissimulation
A response to parker (1999)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11510437 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter V Butler (Royal Rehabilitation Centre, Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1999 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-37 |
| Publication date | 1999-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Psychologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0005-0067 • E-ISSN: 1742-9544 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00050069908257422 |
| OpenAlex | W1982916783 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
This essay is a brief response to Parker's “Diagnostic Line-drawing: How to Pick an Eagle from a Turkey” (1999). The primary significance of Parker's commentary is seen in his willingness to acknowledge that acceptance of DSM-III, and its subsequent revisions, has been engineered around the strategic use of “smoke and mirrors”. Despite frank criticism of isolated elements of the DSM process, Parker's overall critique is blinkered by his adherence to an essentially positivist conceptualisation of scientific inquiry. Parker rigidly maintains that sociocultural values distort legitimate scientific decision-making, and appears unconvinced that all knowledge is socially constructed. This essay concludes with the suggestion that the APA's diagnostic project may be flawed not just by bad science and misrepresentation, but by a fundamental lack of fit between the nature of psychological disturbance and the DSMs central assumption that psychopathological processes can be usefully conceptualised as coherent, discontinuous syndromes indistinguishable from biomedical diseases (mental illnesses)
Criticism · Epistemology · Misrepresentation · Political science · Politics · Positivism · Prestige · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychopathology · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Law · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |