Abstract
M.A.
The anti-psychiatry movement evolved because of grave doubts about the
concept of mental illness and psychiatry's handling of human suffering. In the
application of the medical model to personal suffering, the sufferer becomes the
object of the medical gaze - the all-seeing eye of the doctor. It is argued that
psychiatrists have come to judge not only what is sick, but later what constitutes
health and normality. As such, they have also come to make moral judgements
about acceptable ways of being. Psychiatry has thus become a mechanism to
define and protect the mores of society.
Conduct disorder is seen as an example of socially undesirable behaviour being
deemed disease, the 'sufferers' of which are rigidly controlled by the power of
psychiatry. A power gradient exists between doctor and patient, and this
gradient is partly maintained through the use of a language of exclusion. In this dissertation, the focus is not so much on the validity of psychiatric
knowledges, but rather on the way in which people are conceptualised through
these medical/psychiatic truths. The first part of this work explores the
established psychiatric knowledges about conduct disorder. An interview with a
practicing psychiatrist then sheds light on his conceptualisation of a 'conduct
disordered' child on the basis of the psychiatric knowledges to which he
subscribes. A social constructionist is also interviewed about the same child, to
elucidate the manner in which an epistemology dictates the ways of speaking
with and about a person.
The implementation and implications of psychiatric knowledges are then
discussed. It is argued that psychiatry is a moral/disciplinary system rather than
a medical/healing one. Michel Foucault's writings on mechanisms of power are
used to illustrate how psychiatry creates and maintains a disciplinary society.