Posted by zeugma on September 22, 2006, at 19:46:28 [reposted on September 25, 2006, at 0:09:09 | original URL]
In reply to Re: dualism, posted by alexandra_k on September 22, 2006, at 18:39:15
taking a pill is a psychological act (how else to explain the placebo effect?). and certainly if you are in the group of pill-takers, then you are in a particular social group (a disparate one to be sure, but still it is significant, whether you are a known pill-taker or not. The community of pill-takers is not necessarily one that self-advertises.).
anyway, what i was trying to say earlier is it's better to be in a conceptual free market, where you can unburden yourself of preconceptions, rather than have readymade categories that someone else invented do your thinking for you.
Foucault is very good on this- the archaeology of ideas. An 'archaelogical' investigation of the development of psychopharmacology in no way validates the thought that CNS disorders- or, if you like, syndromes- are an illusion. In fact, it seems to me to show just how little is gained by talking about 'levels' which themselves are likely illusions (the tripartite scheme of physical, psychological, and social, for instance), in order to dissipate the phenomena themselves, which are so noumenal (I mean, not easily categorizable. I suppose categorizing is in the interest of insurance companies. But the experience of being mentally ill, or however you want to call it- it's noumenal, the problem I have with psychotherapists [narrow sense] is that they do not seem to accept this. I never had a pill prescriber interfere so drastically with this noumenality. Nothing like being told that my inner life is wrongly self-interpreted to p*ss me off. Please prescribe the pills instead, they may make me miserable with side effects but they don't mess with this noumenality. Sorry for this parenthetical rant, it's rather a sore point.)
I just wonder why 'biopsychosocial' is preferable to 'biobiobio,' when neither are concepts that can be well elucidated.
And, as you pointed out, it is on the behavioral level that this discussion takes place. Behavioral phenomena really do invite a conceptual free market, since they cannot be translated into convenient other terms without considerable loss of meaning.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:688931
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060922/msgs/688945.html