Sick normalities? Shifting discussions of pathology from the individual to the societal level

Catch up on this seminar from our ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health Seminar Series with Professor Fabian Freyenhagen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, and Director of the Centre for Investigating Contemporary Social Ills (CICSI). This event took place on 18 September 2024 on Zoom.

Read more about the seminar
Ever since the paradigm shift in psychiatry inaugurated with DSM-III in 1980, distress has been increasingly medicalised, accompanied by a prescription epidemic. We have reached a point where it has become the statistical norm in Western countries for people to be diagnosed with at least one “mental disorder” in their lifetime, and where one in four adults are on psychiatric medication.

This talk is part of the wider critical work that seeks to (re-)emphasise the social contexts and causes of distress, and the need to respond to it beyond medicalising. The original contribution is to use the idea of social pathology as a conceptual tool to disclose how normalisation and medicalisation of mental distress obscure social context, thus perpetuating existing social structures.

This contribution goes beyond the important work that focuses on the social determinants of health and well-being in that it shines the light on the nature of society that produces such social determinants. Instead of locating the pathology at the level of individuals, it locates it at the level of societies: Who or what is really ill here? Why and how does the normal functioning of societies require the hegemonic circulation of dispositions, affects, and conduct that their own medical establishment identifies as pathological structures and individuals experience as distress?

About the speaker
Fabian Freyenhagen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, and Director of the Centre for Investigating Contemporary Social Ills (CICSI). A leading expert on the early Frankfurt School, he is renewing its interdisciplinary research programme of a critical theory of society. His current focus is mental distress and its social context. He is the author of Adorno's Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly. CICSI is a new research initiative of academics and practitioners. It's cross-institutional and independent. Taking inspiration from the early Frankfurt School, its purpose is to study problems with society by conceptualising them in terms of social ills or pathologies; and to provide conceptual tools and a broader evidence base with which to address them. Our approach is interdisciplinary and ecumenical. It is guided by individuals and social movements who are struggling to end oppression, needless suffering, and injustice.

Note: Please note that our Q&A session was not recorded for this session.