The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatric Ethics is the most comprehensive treatment of the field in history. The volume is organized into ten sections which survey the scope of the text: Introduction, People Come First, Specific Populations, Philosophy and Psychiatric Ethics, Religious Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, Social Contexts of Psychiatric Ethics, Ethics in Psychiatric Citizenship and the Law, Ethics of Psychiatric Research, Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Assessment and Diagnosis, Ethics and Values in Psychiatric Treatment. Written and edited by an international (...) team of experts, this landmark book provides a powerful and compelling review of psychiatric ethics in the 21st Century. (shrink)

The article by Potter and Rif S. El-Mallakh read empathically, invokes a sense of fulfilment in their experiences, serving as inspiration for others to learn and practice ethics better. It describes their growth that has culminated to this sense of fulfilment and inspirational dignity. Crucial for this desirable growth has been, I want to highlight, their good investment in virtuous relationships and diligent processes. I also highlight from their article a potential conceptual restriction to growing in our learning and practicing (...) of ethics. That is, the restriction that occurs when blinded by too narrow a view on what ethics is about or where its emphasis is supposed to be. (shrink)

The boundary problem on defining the conceptual scope and limits of a mental disorder may be tackled at either side of the boundary. On one side, philosophers and philosophically minded clinicians tried clarifying the concept of mental disorder and its related concepts of mental illness and dysfunction in their use and definition. On the other side, Mohammed Rashed's article gives a substantive and refreshing account of this neglected side in terms of social recognition. Thereby the boundary is clarified from the (...) outside through the limits set by the epistemic status of identity claims and the diachronic and synchronic unity of the self-conceptions that make up a person's identity.Stimulated by and building... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 77-78 [Access article in PDF] Language, Mind, and World Werdie (C. W.) Van Staden Keywords psychotherapy, linguistics, semantics, references, speech The paper by Mcconnell and Gillett touches, in a Lacanian way, on the connections between language, world, and the conscious and unconscious mind. Their paper brings together the influential ideas of Freud, philosophical phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism in describing Lacan's approach to these (...) connections. Going further than Lacan's concerns in psychotherapy, their paper calls on us to consider the importance of these connections more generally in philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology.These connections matter substantially in the practice of psychiatry and psychology, for there we need to understand as much as possible of the ways in which language is intimately involved with the minds and brains of people and their biological and interpersonal worlds. Even at first glance, we can easily concede that people use language to express their troubled minds and their past, present, and anticipated relations with their biological and interpersonal worlds; that language use depends inescapably on brain functions (of the Broca and the Wernicke areas, for example); and that practitioners use language receptively and exploratively to access and examine the minds as well as the biological and interpersonal worlds of the people.Cognizant of the connections between language, mind, and world, language has received considerable attention in the psychotherapy literature and practice (e.g., Russell 1987), including from Lacan and his followers. In addition to these practices and theoretical expositions, empirical linguistic studies in psychotherapy have also been published recently (e.g., Van Staden in press; Van Staden and Fulford 2004; Spence 1995; Spence, Mayes, and Dahl 1994).There has been, furthermore, a growing interest in defining linguistic variables for empirical research in general psychiatry and psychology (Van Staden 2002; Thomas and Fraser 1994). The necessary and intimate role of language has also been reviewed recently in coming to a diagnostic understanding of people's difficulties (Van Staden 2003) and in conducting ethically sound assessments of mentally disordered people's capacity to give informed consent (Van Staden and Krüger 2003). Furthermore, the underlying connections between language, mind, and world, for example, have brought about the expectation that genetic factors in the etiology of schizophrenia would be related to the far-reaching capacity of human beings to use language (Crow 1997).A philosophical interest in the connections between language, mind, and world can be traced back to Plato. More recently, it has been taking a central place in analytic philosophy. The vast and sophisticated philosophical literature on this topic suggests that these connections are very [End Page 77] intricate and that we probably have an inchoate understanding of them. These connections are about theories of reference; theories of descriptions; semantic theories of truth; Kant's distinction between form and content; meaning; contextual content; linguistic pragmatism and speech act theories—all elaborate topics, of course, intertwined with various ontological commitments (cf. Luntley 1999).Lacan's contribution, driven by practical need albeit in the constrained area of psychotherapy, has not yet been taken up in analytic philosophy circles. The paper by McConnell and Gillett sets the scene for further philosophical examination that could determine whether Lacan's work does advance contemporary analytic philosophy on this topic. The most potential for such advance concerns probably, as indicated by McConnell and Gillet, insights about the unconscious mind.Notwithstanding a worthy philosophical examination of whether Lacan's work advances contemporary analytic philosophy on the connections between language, mind, and world, it may prove to be a challenging undertaking—probably even more challenging than the admirable groundwork done in the paper by McConnell and Gillett. The reason is, in my opinion, that the depth of Lacan's work is difficult to penetrate, in part because of the abundance of his esoteric terms, some of which are prima facie incommensurable with ordinary analytic language. The philosophical cogency of his work, moreover, is difficult to verify, because he often simply made conjectures, true as they might be, without explicating (sufficiently) the justification thereof.Lacan's work is commendable, however, even if... (shrink)