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Lunacy, insanity, and the purpose of psychiatry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Bruce G. Charlton
Bruce G. Charlton*
Affiliation:
Anatomy Department, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ
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Within psychiatry there are two distinct tendencies. On the one hand there is the tendency for the subject to expand beyond its concern with psychological medicine and encroach upon diverse aspects of society. “The psychiatrist who believes that the phenomena of mental illness can be explained on the basis of a universal theory … finds little difficulty in inflating his theory to explain not only mental disease but also normal human behaviour, interpersonal relations, and ultimately human affairs” (Miller, 1970)

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Articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 14 , Issue 11 , November 1990 , pp. 663 - 665
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1990

References

Crow, T. J. (1986) The continuum of psychosis and its implication for the structure of the gene. British Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 419–429.Google Scholar
Lancet (Editorial) (1985) Irritability in psychiatric nosologists. Lancet, ii, 1223.Google Scholar
Miller, H. (1970) Psychiatry: medicine or magic. British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 3, 122–126.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1980) Culture and Value. (Translated by Winch, Peter.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell: Dated 1946, p. 54e.Google Scholar
Woods, G. (1984) The Myth of Neurosis. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
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