The Epistemology of Psychiatry

Resumo

Psychiatry (the old trade of alienism’) is a new discipline. It was constructed during the 19^th century under the aegis of medicine. Like all historical events, its foundation was assisted by contemporary assumptions, aspirations and a myth of origin. Psychiatry’presented itself as a branch of medicine seeking scientifically to explain the causes of objective phenomena and facts called mental diseases’(and on the basis of such new knowledge) to develop rational cures...