The Medicalization of Psychiatry
Patients are reduced to containers for diagnoses and psychiatrists to abstract functionaries.
Cruelty that originates in good intentions is particularly dangerous and difficult to recognize. The conceptual medicalization of psychiatry is an instance of such cruelty. Medical practices like lobotomy, incarceration and pharmacological assault are obviously horrific, but similar patterns underpin the shift in the way psychiatrists came to think abou…
