Philosophical Perspectives on Technology and Psychiatry
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Description
Our lives are dominated by technology. We live with and through the achievements of technology. What is true of the rest of life is of course true of medicine. Many of us owe our existence and our continued vigour to some achievement of medical technology. And what is true in a major way of general medicine is to a significant degree true of psychiatry. Prozac has long since arrived, and in its wake an ever-growing armamentarium of new psychotropics; beyond that, neuroscience promises ever more technological advances for the field.However, the effect of technology on the field of psychiatry remains highly ambiguous. On the one hand there are the achievements, both in the science and practice of psychiatry; on the other hand technology's influence on the field threatens its identity as a humanistic practice. In this ambiguity psychiatry is not unique - major thinkers have for a long time been highly ambivalent and concerned about the technological order that now defines modern society. For the future, the danger is that the psychiatrically real becomes that which can be seen, the symptom, and especially that which can be measured. Disorders and treatments might become reduced to what can be defined by diagnostic criteria and what can be mapped out on a scale.
Features
- A controversial and stimulating examination of the role and influence of technology within the field of psychiatry, looking at the pros and the cons
- Broad in its approach, showing how technology has influenced prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, and the pitfalls
- Considers the ethical issues stemming from the role of technology in psychiatry
Reviews
"...this book is an interesting look at how technology has changed (sometimes for better, sometimes not) the practice of psychiatry and psychology, especially within the past 20 to 30 years....it offers significant insight into how the practice of psychiatry and psychology have been irreversibly altered."--Doody's
About the Author(s)
James Phillips is in the private practice of psychiatry, with a focus on medically oriented psychotherapy, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Yale School of Medicine. He is Secretary and member of the Executive Committee of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, and is editor of the AAPP Bulletin. He has written extensively in the area of philosophy and psychiatry and is on the editorial board of the journal, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology. He is co-editor (with James Morley) of Imagination and its Pathologies (MIT Press, 2002. Since 2004 he has been involved in developing and supporting a psychiatric clinic in Ayacucho, Peru, a rural Andean city, and he travels there regularly.
