Humanizing Madness de Niall McLaren

Humanizing Madness

Niall McLaren

BAn application of the philosophy of science to psychiatry/BBRPAlthough it's been 140 years since Maudley'sgroundbreaking treatise, modern psychiatry is in astate of intellectual collapse. No psychiatrist practicingtoday can point to a universally agreed model of mentaldisorder which explains the common observationsof mental disorder, dictates a research program andordains a form of management.BRBRThis book, the result of thirty years research in thephilosophy of science, takes each of the major theoriesin psychiatry and demonstrates conclusively that it isso flawed as to be beyond salvation. It goes further, inthat the author outlines a model of mental functionwhich both satisfies the essential requirements of anyscientific model, and shows how the phenomena of mental disorder can bedescribed in a parsimonious dualist model which leads directly to a humanistform of management of the most widespread form of disability in theworld today.BRBR"This book is a tour de force. It demonstrates a tremendous amount of erudition,intelligence and application in the writer. It advances an interestingand plausible mechanism for many forms of human distress. It is an importantwork that deserves to take its place among the classics in books aboutpsychiatry." -Robert Rich, PhD, AnxietyAndDepression-Help.comBRBRBAbout the Author/BBRBRNiall McLaren has been an M.D. and practicing psychiatrist since 1977.Since then, he has undertaken a far-reaching research program, some ofwhich has previously been published. For six years, while working in theKimberley Region of Western Australia, he was the world's most isolated psychiatrist.He is married with two children and lives in a tropical house hiddenin the bush near Darwin, Australia.BRBRBFrom Future Psychiatry Press/B www.FuturePsychiatry.comBRan imprint of Loving Healing Press

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	Preț	Express
Paperback (1)	157^.29 lei 3-5 săpt.
Future Psychiatry Press – 5 sep 2007	157^.29 lei 3-5 săpt.
Hardback (1)	255^.75 lei 3-5 săpt.
Future Psychiatry Press – 7 oct 2007	255^.75 lei 3-5 săpt.

Preț

Express

Paperback (1)

157^.29 lei 3-5 săpt.

Future Psychiatry Press – 5 sep 2007

157^.29 lei 3-5 săpt.

Hardback (1)

255^.75 lei 3-5 săpt.

Future Psychiatry Press – 7 oct 2007

255^.75 lei 3-5 săpt.

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