Madness and Reason (Studies in Applied Philosophy)

Politics & Social Sciences

Radden, Jennifer

Philosophy

Unwin Hyman

In Moody Minds Distempered philosopher Jennifer Radden assembles several decades of her research on melancholy and depression. The chapters are ordered into three categories: those about intellectual and medical history of melancholy and depression; those that emphasize aspects of the moral, psychological and medical features of these concepts; and finally, those that explore the sad and apprehensive mood states long associated with melancholy and depressive subjectivity. A newly written introduction maps the conceptual landscape, and draws out the analytic and thematic interconnections between the chapters.Radden emphasizes and develops several new themes: the implications, theoretical phenomenological and moral, of recognizing melancholy and depressive states as mood states; questions of method, as they affect how we understand and characterize claims about melancholy and depression; and the persistence and force of cultural tropes linking such states to brilliance, creativity, and sagacity. Insights from literature and the history of medicine, psychology, and psychiatry are woven together with those from the more recent disciplines of feminist theory and cultural studies. This is interdisciplinary writing at its best-part analytic philosophy, and part history of ideas.

Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

Oxford University Press

The context for this interdisciplinary work by a philosopher and a clinician is the psychiatric care provided to those with severe mental disorders. Such a setting makes distinctive moral demands on the very character of the practitioner, it is shown, calling for special virtues and greater virtue than many other practice settings. In a practice so attentive to the patient's self identity, the authors promote a heightened awareness of cultural and particularly gender issues. By elucidating the nature of the moral psychology and character of the good psychiatrist, this work provides a sustained application of virtue theory to clinical practice. With its roots in Aristotelian writing, The Virtuous Psychiatrist presents virtue traits as habits, able to be cultivated and enhanced through training. The book describes these traits, and how they can be habituated in clinical training. A turn towards virtue theory within philosophy during the last several decades has resulted in important research on professional ethics. By approaching the ethics of psychiatric professionals in these virtue terms, Radden and Sadler's work provides an original application of this theorizing to practice. Of interest to both theorists and practitioners, the book explores the tension between the model of enduring character implicit in virtue theory and the segmented personae of role-specific moral responses. Clinical examples are provided, based upon dramaturgical vignettes (caseplays) which illustrate both the interactions of the case participants as well as the inner monologue of the clinician protagonist.

The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry)

Sadler, John

Jennifer Radden here provides a re-interpretation of the classic text by 17th century scholar Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Her new reading of Burton's essential text brings several key facets of his thought to light: the role of imagination in inciting and averting melancholy as disorder; the part played by daily habits of thought in engendering severe and incurable conditions; the multi-directional feedback loops linking feeling and thought in his model of mind; and an emphasis on symptoms and natural history in his understanding of disease. Much of Burton's account is derived from classical, medieval and renaissance writing about melancholy, yet he brought them together into something new: an account that -- while it stands in contrast to many of the assumptions of later psychology -- concurs surprisingly well with present day cognitivism. Moreover, although seventeenth century melancholy bears only a loose relationship to present day mood disorders such as depression and anxiety, on this reading the Anatomy anticipates a considerable number of findings and hypotheses associated with present day psychiatry, including its network models of depression, for example, and its emphasis on the part played by rumination and mind wandering in engendering affective disorder. Radden's new reading of a classic text should interest readers in philosophy of mind and psychiatry, clinical psychiatry and the history of medicine.

Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy & the Mind Sciences

If people change radically as a result of mental disturbance or brain damage or disease, how should we acknowledge that change in the way in which we respond to them? And how should society and the law acknowledge that change, particularly in cases of multiple-personality and manic-depressive disorders? This book addresses these and a cluster of other questions about changes in the self through time and about the moral attitudes we adopt in the face of these changes. The result is a broad-ranging interdisciplinary discussion at the boundaries of psychiatry, philosophy, law, and social policy. Theories of personal identity are applied to, and clarified in light of, the appearance of multiple selves in a variety of personality and identity disturbances.Divided minds force us to clarify our thinking about human subjectivity, Radden points out, and when they result in a succession of "selves," they provoke interesting ethical and legal issues. Radden provides a clear and thorough discussion of basic issues faced by clinicians and philosophers contending with the unity of consciousness and personal identity, particularly in the area of dissociative disorders, where issues of unity of consciousness have a direct impact on clinical and forensic decisions.Part 1 takes up the divisions and heterogeneities associated first with the normal self and then with the pathological self and identifies a "language of successive selves." Part 2 provides an extended analysis of personal responsibility and culpability with regard to extreme multiplicity. Part 3 takes up the notion of a metaphysics of successive selves. And part 4 addresses theoretical concerns associated with clinical material in an effort to further our understanding of the concepts of self-consciousness and subjectivity.A Bradford Book

Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality

Bradford Books

Madness and Reason (Routledge Library Editions: Ethics)

Originally published in 1985, this book provides a philosophical analysis of the concepts of madness and moral responsibility. It challenges the view that because they are victims of mental illness, the insane should not be blamed for actions resulting from their condition. The author urges a return to the neglected equation between madness and a want of reason, arguing that the impulse to excuse the criminally insane must be grounded in an appeal to their irrationality and unreasonableness. Through meticulous examination of the psychological states and behaviour patterns of major mental abnormalities, such as schizophrenia and depression, the author develops a notion of exculpating unreason. This is an interdisciplinary book which encompasses analytical philosophy, abnormal psychology and law.

Routledge

Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb, panoramic investigation of delusion Jennifer Radden explores these questions and more, unravelling a fascinating story that ranges from Descartes’s demon to famous first-hand accounts of delusion, such as Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Radden places delusion in both a clinical and cultural context and explores a fascinating range of themes: delusions as both individually and collectively held, including the phenomenon of folies á deux; spiritual and religious delusions, in particular what distinguishes normal religious belief from delusions with religious themes; how we assess those suffering from delusion from a moral standpoint; and how we are to interpret violent actions when they are the result of delusional thinking. As well as more common delusions, such as those of grandeur, she also discusses some of the most interesting and perplexing forms of clinical delusion, such as Cotard and Capgras.

On Delusion (Thinking in Action)

On Delusion

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Books by Radden, Jennifer

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Radden, Jennifer. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Madness and Reason (Studies in Applied Philosophy)

Moody Minds Distempered: Essays on Melancholy and Depression

The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Character Ethics in Psychiatric Practice (International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry)

Melancholic Habits: Burton's Anatomy & the Mind Sciences

Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders of Identity and Personality

Madness and Reason (Routledge Library Editions: Ethics)

Madness and Reason (Routledge Library Editions: Ethics)

On Delusion (Thinking in Action)

On Delusion (Thinking in Action)

On Delusion