Neil Pickering – författare

Despite the currency of the notion of mental illness, its legal and medical legitimacy, and the panoply of psychiatry and other mental health services which claim to treat it, there are those who take the radical sceptical line that mental illness is a fabrication. This is a book which takes this sceptical line seriously - perhaps more seriously than almost any other book not written by sceptics themselves. 'The Metaphor of Mental Illness' is a revaluation of the traditional philosophical disputes about the existence and nature of mental illness. Sceptics and apologists have generally focused on the legitimacy of extending illness from the physical to the mental, by means of the likeness argument. This says that claimed mental illnesses, from ADHD to schizophrenia, really are illnesses providing they are sufficiently similar to agreed physical illnesses. This book proposes that this argument is flawed: the likenesses to which the argument appeals appear when these examples have been categorised as illnesses, rather than the categorisation being evidenced by or derived from the likenesses. The categorisation of ADHD, schizophrenia, and so on, as illnesses is a matter of metaphor: an imaginative shift into the illness category. The book puts forward a new view of and resolution of the issues, to which it carefully guides the reader. It is a book which engages with many contemporary issues and styles of analysis, but is accessible to anyone not familiar with these. It is full of examples, both historical and modern. It is a book both for the postgraduate student coming to grips with the issues for the first time, for the researcher who is interested in a new approach to the issues, and for mental health workers such as psychiatrists who are interested in the fundamental assumptions of their field of work.

Values in Higher Education Teaching explores the way in which teaching, research, learning and higher education are a values enterprise and that an exploration of values is necessary to work out the full purposes of a higher education to guide practices and help academics understand academic work. Values inform thinking and actions and although this is well recognized, values are seldom brought to the forefront of inquiries as practices in higher education are developed. This book argues that by putting values firmly on the agenda of those who teach, work and learn in higher education the academic profession can open up new spaces for value conversations and potentially transform the way in which they practice. Values in Higher Education Teaching is key reading for university lecturers, those with responsibility for leadership and management of higher education and postgraduates studying for higher degrees in higher education.There are few books that directly address the broad and complex question of values in teaching in higher education yet at the same time values are widely recognised as permeating all our practices. In this sense an accepted part of academic life remains in the realm of ‘taken for granted’ rather than being consciously and explicitly explored and practiced. The book deals with the idea of values in both a philosophical and practical manner. It is based on original research and uses both empirical data and theory to address teaching values in higher education and the current values of the higher education system. It explores what academics have valued historically in teaching and also addresses the major reforms of the last 20 years. Reforms have essentially changed the nature of western higher education but have made little real difference to the outcomes for student learning and society whereas teaching with values in all subjects has the potential to radically alter student experiences.