1st Edition

On the Social Utility of Psychopathology Deviant Majority and Its Keepers?

By Nathaniel Pallone Copyright 1986
    92 Pages
    by Routledge

    Nathaniel Pallone argues that, whatever else is true of psycho-pathology, it serves purposes which are socially useful. What­ever else is true of its clinical treatment, such treatment func­tions as a form of social regula­tion. In societal terms, such treat­ment may serve purposes quite other than the relief of psycho­logical disease or even the remedy of psychological disorder. If psychopathology had not emerged naturally, society might have needed to engender psychopathogenic conditions both to fulfill so­cially useful purposes and to elicit that subtle mechanism for social regulation we term "psychother­apy." Pallone constructs his ar­gument by summing up the evi­dence for two points which apply to all psychotherapeutic practice: that the relief of psychopathology is in no dependable way associ­ated with psychotherapeutic treatment; and that in all schools of psychotherapy, the only clear-cut criterion for terminating treatment is the limit of the pa­tient's financial resources.What surprised me in this manu­script is the stark simplicity with which Pallone constructs his ar­gument [that] society acquires the license to create unlimited [psy­chological] disease, to define this disease as intolerable, to finance armies of disease alleviators providing 'treatments' that are in even more profound contradic­tion with each other than were the religions of old.... The illustra­tion[s] make Pallone's argument crystal clear. - Ivan Illich, from the Preface

    Biography

    Nathaniel Pallone