Diagnostic Cultures

Svend Brinkmann's Diagnostic Cultures convincingly challenges explanations that attribute the huge recent rise of mental disorders to either actual social changes or the growing ability of mental health professionals to identify pathology. Instead, it presents an innovative and imaginative explanation for the expansion of mental disorder that is grounded in changing diagnostic practices among both professionals and patients. The book deserves a wide readership among everyone with an interest in mental illness and social processes. Allan V. Horwitz, Rutgers University, USA This book presents both a challenge to and an extension of perspectives on medicalization. Grounded in sophisticated cultural psychological and theoretical works, Diagnostic Cultures challenges us to rethink the context of the increasing pathologization of human conditions. Along the way, Svend Brinkmann sheds new light on the social dimensions of diagnosis as well. Peter Conrad, Brandeis University, USA "A captivating analysis of the ways that use of medical diagnoses to categorize human behavior has altered our inner experience and our everyday social lives." - Donald R. Marks and Larissa Redziniak in PsycCRITIQUES (2016)

Svend Brinkmann is Professor of Psychology and Qualitative Methods and Co-director of the Center for Qualitative Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the author of Qualitative Inquiry in Everyday Life: Working with Everyday Life Materials, Qualitative Interviewing and Psychology as a Moral Science: Perspectives on Normativity, and the co-author of InterViews (Third Edition): Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Introducing the Concept of Diagnostic Cultures 2. Psychiatric Diagnoses as Epistemic Objects 3. Languages of Suffering 4. Psychiatric Diagnoses as Semiotic Mediators 5. "Do More, Feel Better, Live Longer": Being a Psychiatric Subject 6. Interpreting the Epidemics 7. Towards a Comprehensive Understanding of Mental Disorder 8. General Conclusions Bibliography Index