Psychiatry and Resentment: A Philosophical Examination of the Psychiatric Survivors' Movement

Abstract

In this thesis I set out to show that the ethical literature dealing with psychiatry contains a serious omission: it does not discuss the issue of humiliation in the psychiatric context. I claim that the reason for this lies in the "objective attitude" that typifies both discourse on psychiatric ethics and actual clinical practice. Psychiatrists and psychiatric ethicists tend to view patients as things to be "controlled, studied, cured or trained," an attitude inimical to the "participant attitude" that sees others as responsible members of the moral community. This leads not only to a distorted view of the patient, but it also prevents doctors and ethicists from addressing the normative content of patient grievances. On the other hand, Axel Honneth and Charles Taylor's theories of "recognition" emphasize the subjective experience of humiliation and show how feelings of wounded dignity can motivate social struggles --including, I claim, the psychiatric survivors' movement. I argue further that psychiatric ethics must take account of what the patients themselves say about their experience of psychiatry; to this end I juxtapose some of the main ideas found in psychiatric ethics with quotations from psychiatric survivors about their experience of humiliation at the hands of psychiatry.