Homo Psychologicus in Modern Society

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Other Title
  • 「心理学的人間」の近代
  • シンリガクテキ ニンゲン ノ キンダイ

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In this paper, I discuss roles of psychology and psychiatry in modern society. First, I examine the studies by Michel Foucault (Foucault 1966,1972) about the fact that persons insane are excluded from almost all social-roles in modern society, and that psychology and psychiatry are connected to this exclusion. In this examination, I refer to the study of Takahashi Ryoko(Takahashi 1993) and Sato Toshiki(Sato 1993) and confirm the following theses: 1. Psychological and psychiatric investigations on "psy" depend on the assumption of "homo psychologicus" (Foucault 1966). 2. The "choice-responsibility rule" (Sato 1993) helps modern societies to exclude persons insane from social life. ("Choice-responsibility rule" is the rule that one has to take responsibility for one's own choice.) Secondly, based on these theses, I explain three roles of psychology and psychiatry in modern society. 1. They contribute to the changes of the designations of deviance from badness to sickness. 2. they also contribute to the change in the opposite direction, from sickness to badness. 3. They also contribute to invent new categoris of deviant behavior. In this explanation, I refer to the discussion about medicalization of deviance (Conrad & Schneider 1992), about the contribution of stress studies to "victim-blaming"(Kuroda 1993, Greco 1993), and about codependency (Noguchi 1993).

Journal

  • 年報人間科学

    年報人間科学 21 175-190, 2000

    大阪大学人間科学部社会学・人間学・人類学研究室

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