Description
Book SynopsisNathaniel Pallone argues that, whatever else is true of psycho-pathology, it serves purposes which are socially useful. What ever else is true of its clinical treatment, such treatment func tions as a form of social regula tion. In societal terms, such treat ment may serve purposes quite other than the relief of psycho logical disease or even the remedy of psychological disorder. If psychopathology had not emerged naturally, society might have needed to engender psychopathogenic conditions both to fulfill so cially useful purposes and to elicit that subtle mechanism for social regulation we term psychother apy. Pallone constructs his ar gument by summing up the evi dence for two points which apply to all psychotherapeutic practice: that the relief of psychopathology is in no dependable way associ ated with psychotherapeutic treatment; and that in all schools of psychotherapy, the only clear-cut criterion for terminating treatment is the limit of the pa tient's financial resources.What surprised me in this manu script is the stark simplicity with which Pallone constructs his ar gument [that] society acquires the license to create unlimited [psy chological] disease, to define this disease as intolerable, to finance armies of disease alleviators providing 'treatments' that are in even more profound contradic tion with each other than were the religions of old.... The illustra tion[s] make Pallone's argument crystal clear. - Ivan Illich, from the Preface
