Alien Landscapes?: Interpreting Disordered Minds

by Jonathan Glover

Overview

We have made huge progress in understanding the biology of mental illnesses, but comparatively little in interpreting them at the psychological level. The eminent philosopher Jonathan Glover believes that there is real hope of progress in the human interpretation of disordered minds.

The challenge is that the inner worlds of people with psychiatric disorders can seem strange, like alien landscapes, and this strangeness can deter attempts at understanding. Do people with disorders share enough psychology with other people to make interpretation possible? To explore this question, Glover tackles the hard cases—the inner worlds of hospitalized violent criminals, of people with delusions, and of those diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Their first-person accounts offer glimpses of inner worlds behind apparently bizarre psychiatric conditions and allow us to begin to learn the “language” used to express psychiatric disturbance. Art by psychiatric patients, or by such complex figures as van Gogh and William Blake, give insight when interpreted from Glover’s unique perspective. He also draws on dark chapters in psychiatry’s past to show the importance of not medicalizing behavior that merely transgresses social norms. And finally, Glover suggests values, especially those linked with agency and identity, to guide how the boundaries of psychiatry should be drawn.

Seamlessly blending philosophy, science, literature, and art, Alien Landscapes? is both a sustained defense of humanistic psychological interpretation and a compelling example of the rich and generous approach to mental life for which it argues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674744714
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	447
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Glover is Professor of Ethics at the School of Law, King’s College London.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface Prologue Part One. “Antisocial Personality,” Values, Psychiatry Chapter 1. Socratic Questions in Broadmoor Chapter 2. The Contours of a Moral Landscape Chapter 3. Childhood and After Chapter 4. Interpreting This Landscape Chapter 5. Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor Part Two. On Human Interpretation Chapter 6. Hopes for the Future of Psychiatry Chapter 7. “A Skill So Deeply Hidden in the Human Soul" Chapter 8. Intuitive Interpretation Chapter 9. Reflective Interpretation Part Three. Human Interpretation in Psychiatry Chapter 10. “A Gulf Which Defies Description" Chapter 11. Autism and Interpretation Chapter 12. Interpreting Delusions Chapter 13. Waking Dreams Part Four. The Boundaries of Psychiatry Chapter 14. The Need for Boundaries Chapter 15. Personality and Sexuality Chapter 16. Dysfunction? Chapter 17. Harm Chapter 18. What Is Autism? Chapter 19. Crossing the Medical Boundary? Chapter 20. Strands in a Good Human Life Part Five. Agency, Control, and Responsibility Chapter 21. Brain, Mind, and Agency Chapter 22. Psychiatric Conditions and the Framework of Responsibilty Chapter 23. What Is Addiction? Chapter 24. Unwilling Addiction as Diminished Control Chapter 25. Character, Personality Disorder, and Responsibility Part Six. Identity Chapter 26. The Sense of Self Chapter 27. Moral Identity and Moral Injury Chapter 28. Psychotherapy, Autonomy, and Self-Creation Chapter 29. Entrapment in Eating Disorders Chapter 30. Authenticity and Identity in Eating Disorders Chapter 31. Dementia, Responsibility, and Identity Chapter 32. Schizophrenia Chapter 33. Self-Creation, Values, and Psychiatric Disorder Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

07/07/2014
Glover (Causing Death and Saving Lives), professor of ethics at the School of Law, King’s College, London, attempts a close encounter of the intellectual kind as he probes the ethical aspects of mental disorders and opens up new terrain in an age-old discussion. Responding to the long-standing discord between humanist and scientific perspectives on mental illness—an imbalance that consistently favors science—Glover aims to restore humanist views to the discussion through a sensitive examination of art, literature, and, perhaps most noteworthy, interviews with people who have mental disorders. One of Glover’s central points is that moral values can shed light on how mental illness is interpreted, and indeed discussion of interpretation guides a good portion of the book. Glover’s background in philosophy and ethics gives the discussion a decisively philosophical slant. The humanist point of view is often expressed esoterically. Such an approach feels alien to those who come to the topic exclusively interested in mental disorder. For the philosophically inclined, though, Glover’s exploration will prove to be an exciting and informative text. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A wide-ranging philosophical investigation of psychology and a psychological examination of philosophy.

New Scientist - Jonathon Keats

[An] interesting and readable book, the professed aims of which are to make mental health patients seem less alien and to emphasize the role of the humane and the humanities in psychiatry… Admirable.

Literary Review - Iain McGilchrist

A great read, and genuinely illuminating on the inner lives of patients with disorders, and their implications for responsibility and identity. This book is for all of us who have had the impulse to write off someone as ‘crazy,’ meaning: there isn’t any point in trying to engage or understand what’s going on with this person. This is a timely and well-crafted book.

John Campbell

This book should become a classic in the study of philosophy and psychiatry. The lucidity of the writing makes it, at once, profound and accessible. While acknowledging the substantial contribution of the biological sciences to our understanding of unusual mental states, Glover explores in depth how far an observer can make sense of—or ‘interpret’—them. The implications for how we might think about ‘values,’ ‘identity,’ ‘agency,’ the boundaries of ‘illness,’ and treatment are most richly drawn.

George Szmukler

2014-08-27
A searching, humane look at the lives of the mentally ill, whose inner worlds can be alien landscapes indeed. Examining a population of hospitalized patients in Britain, ethicist Glover (Law/King's Coll., London; Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, 2000) asks whether it is true that people who suffer from anti-social disorders are truly without conscience or whether it might not be that their moral world simply maps onto different territory from other people's—an important distinction in considering such things as the ability to recognize right from wrong and accept responsibility for one's actions. In what he calls "Socratic interviews," Glover looks at the mechanisms of moral restraint and governance, observing that many of those diagnosed with anti-social disorders lack a "normal" sense of moral obligation. However, he notes, what constrains many of us from doing such things as parking in a handicapped spot is simply the fear of being fined or chastised, rather than the abstract rightness or wrongness of the issue. Not that the mentally ill lack understanding of right and wrong; as the author writes, "[t]here was a lot of support for capital punishment" in his interview results, and nuanced support at that. Drawing examples from art and literature and arguing to some extent against proponents of a more expressly biological and medical view of psychiatry, Glover counsels an open-minded awareness of the minds of the ill: "Biological psychiatry, citing such causes as abnormalities of brain chemistry, sometimes helps to cure or contain disorders. But it gives no intuitive understanding of how people feel from the inside." As to treatment, the author argues that the disorder be gauged with an eye to the "kind and degree of harm it causes." Of substantial interest to students of psychiatry, ethics and the law alike and especially to those working in areas in which the three overlap.

Kirkus Reviews