Humanities Colloquium - Anne Harrington (Literature and Cultural Studies): The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry: What Really Happened?

One of the most striking developments in psychiatry of the past thirty years has been the unbelievably rapid dismantling of a family-oriented, interpersonal approach to mental illness and the embrace of a biological alternative. The general assumption is that this has happened because of the drug revolution in psychiatry on the one side and an explosion of new findings in the brain sciences on the other.  This assumption is wrong or, at least, seriously incomplete. In fact, the so-called biological revolution in psychiatry was above all a rhetorical revolution. It happened because the prevailing psychosocial and psychoanalytic consensus on mental illness seemed to be in shambles. The brain was going to be the rallying flag of a new start.  The case of schizophrenia — focusing on the American story — will serve to make this argument in detail.