Date of Graduation
8-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Philosophy (MA)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Philosophy
Advisor/Mentor
Amanda McMullen
Committee Member
Eric Funkhouser
Second Committee Member
Richard Lee
Keywords
Autism, Disability, Ontology, Philosophy, Psychiatry
Abstract
Psychiatry is the study, evaluation, and treatment of mental disorders – disorders that affect the behavior and cognition of individuals and which are associated with underlying dysfunctions in the brain and nervous system. Though psychiatry is a medical and scientific discipline, it also takes place within a social context that modifies its effects, particularly in its application of diagnostic categories to individuals. In this thesis, I argue that, because of this context, psychiatric diagnosis can be modeled as an ontogenetic, interpellative speech act. A speech act is an utterance or sign that constitutes an action through its performance, called an illocution. In psychiatric diagnosis, this illocution is ontogenesis, or the instantiation of an individual as a member of a social kind. Because of how this kind is embedded in a social structure, this ontogenetic illocution also results in the perlocutionary effect of interpellation, where a person is signaled, or “hailed,” to behave in ways considered appropriate to that diagnosis and the social kind and role associated with it. I will offer an overview of the concepts required for this model, including social structure, social kinds, social positions and roles, and social practices. I will also analyze ontogenesis, phylogenesis, and interpellation, offering felicity conditions for interpellation and for the type of ontogenetic speech act that psychiatric diagnosis exemplifies – authoritative ontogenetic speech acts. I will demonstrate how psychiatric diagnosis meets these felicity conditions so that it can be effectively modeled as an ontogenetic, interpellative speech act. Finally, I will consider a case where ontogenesis and interpellation in psychiatric diagnosis leads to unjust conditions through a background ideology of ableism – namely, autpocalypse and autistic filicide, or the denial of autistic agency and the murder of autistic persons by their families and caretakers.
Citation
Sorrels, A. (2022). The Social Ontology of Psychiatry: Psychiatric Diagnosis as an Ontogenetic, Interpellative Speech Act. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/4647