A (Somewhat Irreverent) Introduction to Philosophy for Medical Students and Other Busy People de Niall McLaren

A (Somewhat Irreverent) Introduction to Philosophy for Medical Students and Other Busy People

Niall McLaren

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 30 apr 2012

During their careers, many students become aware that, lurking in the background, there are complex and conceptually difficult questions that, all too often, their teachers either can't answer, or can't even understand. These are traditionally the questions addressed by philosophy, and this little primer is the result of another student's journey over many years. Niall McLaren MD has spent over three decades banging his head against the Really Difficult questions behind psychiatry, and offers his a personal view of how these questions should be approached. Very deliberately, he simplifies the convoluted language and reasoning that set philosophers apart, making it accessible to students of scientific fields in particular.
In this book, you will gain a background in the following fields:

Religion and the origins of philosophy
Mentalism, antimentalism and behaviorism
Epistemology, as the study of knowledge itself
Philosophy and the nature of science
Philosophy and the nature of ethics

Included is a glossary explaining some of the many -isms that can be so daunting to non-philosophers because philosophers too have their jargon but it is not meant to intimidate. True, it can be complex, but the issues involved are complex. The goal of this book is to show that, with clear thinking, the complexities need not be overwhelming.

"This is one of the very few books I have every intention of reading several times in rapid succession. It is such a bounty of iconoclastic observations emanating from an in-depth acquaintance with psychiatry and a love of philosophy that no single reading can do it justice: it just keeps giving."---Sam Vaknin, PhD, author of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"From Future Psychiatry Press www.FuturePsychiatry.com

Citește tot Restrânge

Notă biografică

Niall McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist, author and critic. He was born and educated in rural Western Australia, graduating in medicine at the University of WA in Perth in 1970. He completed his postgraduate training in psychiatry in 1977 and subsequently worked in prisons and then in the Veterans' Hospital, with a year's break working in the far southern region of Thailand. From 1983-87, he studied philosophy in order to undertake a PhD jointly in psychiatry and philosophy of science. In 1987, he left Perth city to travel to the remote Kimberley Region of Western Australia as the region's first psychiatrist. As a psychiatrist with no staff, no hospital beds, no clinic and not even an office, nearly 2000km from the nearest psychiatrist, he was the world's most isolated psychiatrist. While there, he continued studying and writing and began publishing work highly critical of mainstream psychiatry. After six years in the bush, he moved to Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory, first as chief psychiatrist for the Top End, then in private practice, where he was closely involved with the large military population. He has since moved to Brisbane, in Queensland, and is emphatic that there will be no more moves. His work is highly original and he does not admit to any intellectual debt to psychiatrists, living or dead. When he graduated in psychiatry, he was aware that the field was not what it claimed to be. It was clear that psychiatrists routinely made major claims on the nature of mind and of mental disorder that were not justified in the literature and, he intuited, could never be justified. This led him to the philosophy of science which established that psychiatry lacked a formal model of mental disorder. In turn, this problem arose just because it had no model of mind. As a result, modern psychiatry lacks a basis in any known concept of science. It is, in fact, at best a proto¬science and, at worst, crude and highly misleading pseudoscience. Almost invariably, his work provokes bitter antagonism from mainstream psychiatrists. Over the past forty years, orthodox psychiatry has committed itself totally to the reductionist biological approach to mental disorder, with no possible alternatives. Despite massive increases in expenditure on mental health, there is absolutely no evidence to support the oft-repeated claims that psychiatry is making great advances and people are better off than they have ever been. Every figure indicates that as psychiatry extends its reach, the mental health of the population declines. McLaren argues that this is just because psychiatry is not a science. Because it lacks a formal model of its field of study, mental disorder, psychiatry is perpetually at the mercy of social and political fads and fashions. He maintains that biological psychiatry is nothing more than a passing fad and must eventually go the way of psychoanalysis, behaviourism and possession theory. In the meantime, it is doing an immeasurable amount of damage. He recently published the results of a lifetime of work on a model of mind for psychiatry, the biocognitive model, which leads directly to a model of mental disorder. This is the first time in the history of psychiatry that such a model has been available. The present work, Narcisso-Fascism, was designed as a test of the biocognitive model by applying it to a completely unrelated field. What emerges is an entirely novel understanding of the politics of extremism which confirms what has often been said, "The fascist is within me," but also offers a means of controlling the phenomenon. Given the present state of world politics, this is definitely needed. Learn more at www.niallmclaren.com