On the Use of Clinical Terms in Social Theory

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Feb 7 06:46:33 PST 2000


Ken wrote:
>On Mon, 7 Feb 2000 01:06:10 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>> -- But this garbage by Ken is in principle unfit for civil conversation.
>
>> Statements of this sort about mental illness, and in particular about
>> those illnesses miscalled "psychoses," cannot form the substance
>> of any conversation among decent people. Your question refers to
>> style, my post referred to substance. There is no possible style which
>> could make Ken's propositions civil.
>
>I don't quite understand, off hand, why clinical terms are inappropriate for
>social theoretical discourse. I mean, everybody else is doing it so why
>can't
>we? I'm using the term psychosis to describe cultural logic - no different
>than Jameson, Irigaray, Anderson, Kristeva, Marucse, Arendt, Castoriadis,
>Adorno, Gilroy, Habermas or Marx. Sickness, health, well-being, the good
>life,
>neurosis, diagnostics... these are all medical terms which can be translated
>into social theoretical arguments.

1. Isn't there a contradiction between (a) privileging metaphors of "diagnosis" (playing a doctor) and (b) claiming at the same time that "acting as if one knows" is bad (or as you say, "psychotic")? According to your logic, your (or Lacan's/Zizek's) theory is bad.

2. As Carrol and Miles already mentioned, a "psychosis" is a misnomer and no longer even used in medicine. You are using an obsolete term that clinicians have decided not to use because it fails to serve the work of diagnosis. I suppose that the reader may be led to think that a theory that relies upon an obsolete term is likewise obsolete, but perhaps you don't care what the reader thinks.


>What packs more political punch: individualist consumerism in society
>is bad or it is psychotic?

3. "Political punch" -- if there is any -- comes from the unfortunate fact that many people think that being mentally ill is morally bad, a mental illness is a kind of "character flaw," etc. Saying "psychotic" when you actually mean "morally bad" reinforces the myth and implies that the mentally ill are "responsible" for their mental illness (since without "choice," there is no "ethics"). So, in this case, the "political punch" actually lands on the mentally ill.

4. It seems pointless & individualist to say "consumerism" is "bad."

Yoshie



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