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The Reality of Mental Illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

T. S. Champlin
T. S. Champlin
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

My three main points are:

(a) Mental disease is a metaphor, but mental illness is not.

(b) Feeling ill and having a physical illness are logically related. If there were no such thing as feeling ill, there would be no such thing as suffering from a physical illness. Yet there is no logical connection between feeling ill and being mentally ill.

(c) Mental illness is manifested in various forms of behaviour, for example, suspiciousness, elation, depression, etc.; if a form of behaviour is to count as mental illness, it has to be an insane form; yet it is possible to be mentally ill without being insane and it is possible to be insane without being mentally ill.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 56 , Issue 218 , October 1981 , pp. 467 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1981

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References

1 Szasz, Thomas S., The Myth of Mental Illness (New York: Hoeber-Harper, 1961).Google Scholar

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19 This information was gleaned from several encyclopaedias, one of which said reassuringly that tin disease was known to Aristotle.

20 See Szasz's summary of his argument, pp. 275–276, The Myth of Mental Illness (Paladin revised edition, 1972).

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