HPSC X100: Disordered Minds: The History and Philosophy of Psychiatry

Fall 2015 Schedule and Syllabus

Meeting Time: MWF 11:15-12:05; Location: Sycamore Hall 002
Instructor
Nicholas Zautra
Department of History and Philosophy
of Science
Cognitive Science Program
Office hours: by appointment
Primary Contact
Nicholas Zautra
1011 E. Third Street
Goodbody 009
Bloomington, IN 47405
Email: nzautra@indiana.edu

- Vincent van Gogh Corridor in the asylum (1889)

Course Description:
This course surveys one of the most interesting developments in the history and
philosophy of science: the scientific practices involved in making human beings
an object of study. We examine the ways in which psychologists and psychiatrists
have investigated human nature, approaches to research they have developed to
that end, major controversies in the field, and basic philosophical assumptions
made in the sciences of human nature. We investigate the development of
psychiatric theory, treatment methods, and institutions. Finally, we connect
philosophical questions raised by mental disorder and our attempts to
understand/treat it to debates in philosophy such as the mind/body problem, the

concept of a person, and the possibility of knowledge.

Course Objective
By the end of the course, students should have a broad knowledge of the history,
philosophy, and major concepts in the philosophy of psychiatry, and be able to
come to their own well-reasoned personal opinions about the issues in question.
Attendance/Class Participation Policy: Classes will involve a great deal of
participation. Thus, student participation and attendance is expected. You are
expected to have read the assignments and be ready to discuss the material in
depth. Your overall grade for the course will be lowered by a half letter grade for
every unexcused absence you have beyond three absences.
Required Text:
Fulford, Bill, Tim Thornton, and George Graham. "Oxford textbook of
philosophy and psychiatry." (2006). (Available via IU Bookstore)
Assignments: This course will involve several different kinds of assignments.
The goals of these various assignments are to:
1. Acquaint you with various arguments, which have been presented in favor
of (or against) certain theories and approaches in psychiatry.
2. Examine the history of psychiatry, introducing you to debate about
interpretation of the historical process, focusing on important individuals
and movements and drawing attention to recurrent ideas and themes.
3. Expose you to conceptual analysis by relating historical conceptual
problems to modern problems in psychiatry, and by examining some key
concepts (such as mind, behavior, consciousness, theory, explanation,
mental illness, etc.)
4. Foster the development of your own abilities to present and evaluate
arguments.
Points Breakdown of Assignments
Office Hours Visit

25 Points

Homework Exercises
In-Class Presentation
Midterm Exam
Final Exam

400 Points
175 Points
200 Points
200 Points
1000 Points TOTAL

Office Hours Visit (2.5%): Your first assignment will be to schedule an initial 10minute visit with your course instructor. This visit, which will take place during the
first two weeks of class will be an informal conversation primarily designed to
allow one-on-one face time between you and the instructor, a sort of get-toknow-you. This visit will also serve to let you know where office hours will be
held, and to allow you to ask any questions you have regarding the course.
Homework Exercises (40%): Several homework exercises will be assigned
throughout the duration of the course. Each homework exercise will typically
include reading a short excerpt, thinking about that reading, and then responding
to several questions. The exercises can be found in the required textbook.
Class Presentation (17.5%): At the beginning of the semester, you will sign up
to focus on a particular kind of case of mental illness, and gather information
about it. Then each student will give a brief (10-minute) presentation on that
particular kind of mental illness and the philosophical issues that arise. In
gathering information about your chosen illness, I especially want you to try to
find descriptions of what it is like to have the disorder; what goes through the
mind of the person with the disorder, how do they think about other people, how
do they live from day to day with the disorder? I encourage you to find memoirs,
novels, movies, documentaries, TV shows, blogs, newspaper articles, artwork,
poetry, music, and also clinical descriptions by mental health professionals, so
you get a variety of perspectives.
Midterm Exam (15%): The midterm exam will cover topics in the required text
from first part of the course (Parts I & 2).

Final Exam (25%): The final exam will cover topics in the required text from the
second part of the course (Parts III, IV, & V).
Course Structure:
This course aims to cover the large majority of the text and consists of five parts:
Part I: Core Concepts in Philosophy and Mental Health
What is a mental illness and how does it relate to disease?
Part II: A Philosophical History of Psychopathology
How have we come to recognize the variety and subtlety of
psychopathological concepts?
Part III: Philosophy of Science and Mental Health
What is the relationship between science and the experiencing subject?
Part IV: Values, Ethics, and Mental Health
What are the moral and legal issues that arise in psychiatry?
Part V: Philosophy of Mind and Mental Health
What is the role of rationality both in our understanding of minds and
mental states, and in the marking of the minds as different from other
aspects of the natural world?
Course Schedule:
Reading
Assignments, etc.
Assignments
Week 1: Introduction to the History and Philosophy and Psychiatry
Date

Topic

Aug 24 Organization and Overview

Aug 26 How to Read Philosophy

Vaughn,
Chapter 1
Aug 28 How to Read Arguments
Vaughn,
Chapter 2
Week 2: Part I: Core Concepts in Philosophy and Mental Health
Aug 31 Philosophical Problems in
Mental Health and Practical
Health

Chapters 2,
pp. 4-13

Sep 2

Philosophical Problems in
Mental Health and Practical
Health
Sep 4 Experiences Good and Bad:
An Introduction to
Psychopathology,
Classification, and Diagnosis
for Philosophers
Week 3: Part I (Continued)
Sep 7
Sep 9

Labor Day
Philosophical Methods in
Mental Health and Practice

Sep 11 Philosophical Methods in

Mental Health and Practice

Chapter 2,
pp. 14-21

Chapter 2, Exercise 7
Due

Chapter 3,
pp. 33-46

No Class
Chapter 3,
pp. 46-51;
Chapter 4,
pp. 61-73
Chapter 4,
pp. 73-83

Week 4: Part I (Continued)

Sep 14 Philosophical Methods in
Chapter 4,
Mental Health and Practice
pp. 61-73
(continued)
Chapter 4, Exercise 14
Sep 16 Philosophical Methods in
Chapter 4,
Due
Mental Health and Practice
pp. 73-83
(Continued)
Sep 18 In-class Presentations
Session One
Week 5: Part II: A philosophical history of psychopathology
Sep 21 Philosophical outputs in
mental health practice and
research
Sep 23 Philosophical outputs in
mental health practice and
research
Sep 25 A brief history of mental

Chapter 6

Chapter 6
(continued)
Chapter 7

Chapter 6, Exercise 16
Due

disorder
Week 6: Part II (Continued)
Sep 28 Karl Jaspers and General
Psychopathology
Sep 30 Phenomenology and
Psychopathology
Oct 2 Phenomenology and
Psychopathology
Week 7: Part II (Continued)

Chapter 8

Oct 5

Chapter 9,
pp. 197-208

Phenomenology and
Psychopathology
MIDTERM EXAM

Chapter 8, Exercise 6
Due

Chapter 9,
pp. 181-191
Chapter 9,
pp. 191-197
Chapter 9, Exercise 1
Due

Oct 7
Oct 9 Fall Break
No Class
Week 8: Part III: Philosophy of Science and Mental Health
Oct 12 Psychoanalysis: An
introduction to the
philosophy of science
Oct 14 Psychoanalysis: An
introduction to the
philosophy of science
Oct 16 Psychoanalysis: An
introduction to the
philosophy of science
Week 9: Part III (Continued)

Chapter 11,
pp. 245-254

Chapter 11,
pp. 271-283

Chapter 11, Exercise 15

Due

Oct 19 Psychopathology and the

theory dependence of Data
Oct 21 Psychopathology and the
theory dependence of Data
Oct 23 Psychopathology and the
theory dependence of Data
Week 10: Part III (Continued)

Chapter 12,
pp. 290-297
Chapter 12,
pp. 297-303
Chapter 12,
pp. 303-313

Chapter 12, Exercise 5

Due

Oct 26 Diagnosis, Explanation, and

Tacit Knowledge

Chapter 14,
pp. 386-391

Chapter 11,
pp. 254-271

Oct 28 Diagnosis, Explanation, and Chapter 14,

Tacit Knowledge
pp. 391-403
Chapter 14, Exercise 11
Oct 30 In-class Presentations
Due
Session Two
Week 11: Part IV: Values, Ethics, and Mental Health
Nov 2

Tools of the Trade: an

introduction to psychiatric
ethics
Nov 4 Tools of the Trade: an
introduction to psychiatric
ethics
Nov 6 From bioethics to valuesbased practice
Week 12: Part IV (Continued)

Chapter 17,
pp. 470-479

Nov 9

Chapter 18,
pp. 509-519
Chapter 18,
pp. 519-530
Chapter 20,
pp. 567Chapter 20,
pp. 567-571

From bioethics to valuesbased practice

Nov 11 From bioethics to valuesbased practice

Nov 13 Values in psychiatric

diagnosis
Week 13: Part IV (Continued)
Nov 16 Values in psychiatric
diagnosis
Nov 18 Values in psychiatric
diagnosis

Nov 20 In-Class Presentations

Session Three
Week 14: THANKSGIVING BREAK

Chapter 17,
pp. 479-492
Chapter 18,
pp. 499-509

Chapter 20,
pp. 571-578
Reich, W.
(1999).
Psychiatric
diagnosis as
an ethical
problem.
Chapter 20, Exercise 11
Due

Nov
No Class
No Class
No Class
22-29
Week 15: Part V: Philosophy of Mind and Mental Health
Nov 30 Mind, brain, and mental
illness: an introduction to the
philosophy of mind
Dec 2 Mind, brain, and mental
illness: an introduction to the
philosophy of mind
Dec 4 Agency, Causation, and
Freedom
Week 16: Part V (Continued)

Chapter 22,
pp. 614-619

Dec 7

Chapter 26,
pp. 727-734
Chapter 27,
pp. 739-750
Chapter 27,
pp. 750-756

Dec 9

Agency, Causation, and

Freedom
Knowledge of other minds

Dec 11 Knowledge of other minds

Chapter 22,
pp. 619-624

Chapter 22, Exercises 4-6

Chapter 26,
pp. 718-727

Finals Week
Dec
14-18

Final Exam Review Session

TBA

FINAL EXAM
5:00-7:00 p.m., Wed.,
December 16

Emotional concerns: Discussing controversial issues connected with personal

experiences of mental illness and family dynamics can bring up powerful
emotions, especially for people with difficult or abusive experiences in their
past. So it is important that the classroom be a safe and supportive space for
everyone in it. If at any point during class you do experience overwhelming
emotions, then you are quite free to leave and take some time for
yourself. Please let me know either when you leave the classroom or afterwards.
Academic and Personal Problems. If you have problems that cause you to be
late with work or to miss a number of classes, please stay in communication by

phone, email, or by meeting with me in person. I will be willing to work with you
and sort out a way for you to still stay in the class and get a fair grade. If you miss
a number of classes or fail to hand in work on time but don't give me any
explanation then you risk failing the class.
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kinds of academic misconduct. In particular the code states: Plagiarism is defined
as presenting someone elses work, including the work of other students, as
ones own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or
oral use must be fully acknowledged, unless the information is common
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formulas, graphics, or pictures of another person without acknowledgment. b. A
student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge an
indebtedness whenever: 1. Directly quoting another persons actual words,
whether oral or written; 2. Using another persons ideas, opinions, or theories; 3.
Paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or
written; 4. Borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; or 5. Offering
materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections
without acknowledgment." (quoted from Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities,
and Conduct, Part II, Student Responsibilities, Academic Misconduct)
For the full IU policy on plagiarism: http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/definition.html
Not sure? Take this self-test: http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/
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