Towards a Pre-Modern Psychiatry

The author applies modified versions of pre-modern philosophy (including Aristotle and Aquinas) to psychiatry, arguing that the work of the Aristotelian philosopher, Christian and former Marxist, Alasdair MacIntyre is ideally placed to bring about a transformation of psychiatry from its current captivity to the modern scientific technical paradigm.

Responding to the work of previous critics of psychiatry, who have associated its undue dominance with both a modern scientific paradigm and political factors, Jenifer Booth puts forward a theoretical challenge based on MacIntyre`s work on Aquinas and Aristotle, but adding the museum and assembly as conceptual thinking tools.

MacIntyre`s work on practices, tradition-constituted enquiry, Marxist ideology and Kuhn are all used in putting forward a pre-modern view of knowledge. The feminist philosophy of Luce Irigaray widens the project to include psychotherapy. Booth puts forward a workable and kind version of psychiatric medicine which sets the work of the mental health service user movement in context.

This book should be of value to anyone who has ever wondered why doctors have so much power or who has thought that spiritual and social factors should have more weight in medicine.

It will be of interest to moral philosophers, theologians and feminist theologians, philosophers of medicine and museums studies professionals alike.