Generalism vs. externalism

The concept of disease

pp. 13-50

in: Yehuda Fried, Joseph Agassi, Psychiatry as medicine, Berlin, Springer, 1983

Abstract

Every profession has an inner opposition from time to time, yet the opposition psychiatry has recently met is more than a mere expression of some inner dissatisfaction. This new movement has gained popularity outside professional circles, where it is known, somewhat inadequately, as antipsychiatry. Inadequately, because antipsychiatry is not opposed to psychiatry in general, but rather, at least according to one of the key claims of antipsychiatry, it is opposed to the Establishment of psychiatry or, if you will, to the vices of psychiatry. The chief vices of psychiatry, say its opponents from within, is the fact that it is built upon a general medical model. This model, the complaint continues, is employed in traditional psychopathology as much as in traditional physical medicine; yet in psychiatry it is entirely useless. The mere words — "the medical model" — provoke endless anger and uncontrolled rage in some antipsychiatric circles.