Psychological Concepts and Biological Psychiatry

A philosophical analysis

Author

Peter Zachar | Auburn University Montgomery

Paperback – Available

ISBN 9789027251480 (Eur) | EUR 72.00

ISBN 9781556199912 (USA) | USD 108.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027299864 | EUR 72.00 | USD 108.00

This interdisciplinary work addresses the question, What role should psychological conceptualization play for thinkers who believe that the brain is the organ of the mind? It offers readers something unique both by systematically comparing the writings of eliminativist philosophers of mind with the writings of the most committed proponents of biological psychiatry, and by critically scrutinizing their shared “anti-anthropomorphism” from the standpoint of a diagnostician and therapist. Contradicting the contemporary assumption that common sense psychology has already been proven futile, and we are just waiting for an adequate scientifically-based replacement, this book provides explicit philosophical and psychological arguments showing why, if they did not already have both cognitive and psychodynamic psychologies, philosophers and scientists would have to invent them to better understand brains. (Series A)

[Advances in Consciousness Research, 28] 2000. xx, 342 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.28

Table of Contents

Preface: What this book is about | p. xv

PART I: THE ATTACK ON PSYCHOLOGY

1. Psychology In Trouble | p. 3

2. Trouble From Psychiatry: Biomedical Materialism | p. 21

3. Trouble From Philosophy: Eliminative Materialism | p. 51

PART II: THE ROBUSTNESS OF PSYCHOLOGY

4. Why There is No Such Thing as “Folk Psychology” | p. 79

5. A Critique of Anti-anthropomorphism | p. 107

6. The Anchors of Psychology | p. 123

7. Materialism Without Physicalism | p. 157

PART III: THE PSYCHOLOGY IN PSYCHIATRY

8. Diagnosis, Behavior, and First-Person Information | p. 183

9 . Evolution, Adaptation, and Psychiatry | p. 211

10. Psychiatry, Science, and Anti-essentialism | p. 227

11. Psychiatry and Reality | p. 253

12. Psychiatry and the Rhetoric of Morality | p. 273

13. Reflections | p. 295

Name Index | p. 331

Subject Index | p. 337

“Peter Zachar argues that the psychological has an essential role in the scientific understanding and clinical treatment of mental illness, and he provides a framework to explain and justify this role. [...] This is one of the most important books to be published in the philosophy of psychiatry.”

Christian Perring, Ph.D., in Metapsychology, January 2003

“[...] his thesis is timely, indeed perennial; no matter how good our biological accounts may be we will still be interacting with human agents who experience distress and describe beliefs about the world.”

Sean A. Spence, in Psychological Medicine 33 (2003)

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