RT Journal
A1 Chodoff P
T1 In the name of mental health: The social functions of psychiatry.
JF Archives of General Psychiatry
JO Archives of General Psychiatry
YR 1969
FD December 1
VO 21
IS 6
SP 766
OP 768
DO 10.1001/archpsyc.1969.01740240126022
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1969.01740240126022
AB In the Name of Mental Health should produce a seismic tremor within the organizational and institutional bastions of psychiatry. Its subtitle, The Social Functions of Psychiatry, is, however, something of a misnomer for the book is not really an objective study of the sociology of psychiatry but is, instead, a treatise on the social misuse of psychiatry. It is also an indictment of the medical model of psychiatry, which the author unmasks as the subterfuge employed by society in utilizing psychiatry as an institution to accomplish certain anti-individual purposes which society would prefer not to look at too closely. In his dissection, the author employs logic and the analysis of concepts and language in a merciless but, it must be said, effective manner to strip away many of the unexamined assumptions operating at the interface between psychiatry and society.The attack he mounts on