Psychiatry’s inchoate wish for a paradigm shift and bio-psych-social model of mental illness

Thornton, Tim orcid iconORCID: 0000-0002-0137-1554 (2020) Psychiatry’s inchoate wish for a paradigm shift and bio-psych-social model of mental illness. In: Rethinking the Biopsychosocial Model. Oxford University Press (OUP), 229-C15.P73.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198789697.003.0015

Abstract

Psychiatry’s inchoate wish for a paradigm shift and the biopsychosocial model of mental illness’ critically examines the much discussed goal of a paradigm shift in psychiatric taxonomy. The chapter first highlights some illustrative calls for such a change and then sets these against the Kuhnian account of science from which the idea is taken, highlighting the connection to incommensurability. Relative to a distinction drawn from Winch, between putative sciences where the self-understanding of subjects plays no role and those where it is fundamental, psychiatry falls into the latter kind. This suggests that the wish for a paradigm shift in psychiatry is either incoherent or a wish for a radical but unpredictable overhaul of a significant aspect of our self-understanding as subjects and agents. The biopsychosocial model of mental illness is thus a helpful reminder of the cost of a paradigm shift in psychiatry.


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