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How and why are clinical concepts used to interpret the structures of society and subjectivity? What are the effects of these kinds of analytic projects, and what relevance, if any, do they have for clinical practice? Extending the arguments of Amanda's book The Sublime Object of Psychiatry: Schizophrenia in Clinical and Cultural Theory (2011), and focussing specifically on schizophrenia, her paper will offer a critical introduction to cultural theory’s deployment of clinical concepts from the ‘psy’ disciplines. Arguing against what is perhaps a majority view – that using psychiatric terminology ‘metaphorically’ is illegitimate, imprecise, irresponsible, and insensitive to the human costs of illness – Her aim is to show why it is important philosophically and in practice to view diagnostic categories from multiple perspectives.
Bio:
Angela Woods is an interdisciplinary medical humanities researcher working at the intersection of cultural theory, philosophy and literary studies. She completed her PhD in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, where she also lectured in Postmodernism. Her first book, The Sublime Object of Psychiatry: Schizophrenia in Clinical and Cultural Theory, was published in 2011, and her current research interests include the study of theoretical and subjective accounts of psychotic experience, critical neuroscience, narrative identity, and the role of narrative in the medical humanities.
All welcome.
- Speaker
- Dr Angela Woods, Durham University
- Hosted by
- (Co-hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities, the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, and the English Research Seminar)
- Venue
- Seminar Room 224, University Library (Second Floor)
- Contact
- c.a.jones@abdn.ac.uk