The Sociology of Mental Disorder
- Author:
Roger Bastide
Routledge and Kegan Paul, ?3.00
Aimez-vous Brahms? Aimez-vous le structuralisme? The half-jibing stereotype of the Frenchman as the great lover is as true in the intellectual sphere as any other and perhaps even more so. After the long affair with existentialism, now the almost obsessional concern with structuralism. But this is a brave book, an honest, uneasy and unassuming book.
There are three clearly defined sections. The middle section deals with major sociological variables? such as social class, mobility, religion, ethnicity, family and kinship?and consists of an encyclopaedic review of all the major empirical work in these fields. The author writes as a sociologist of course and is extremely hesitant about interpretation of results?and so he ought to be for, in all these fields, there are contradictory findings among the various researchers. But Bastide rarely ducks out, and he persists in the attempt to relate fieldwork to meaningful theory.
That is the real delight of the book ?his refusal to dodge issues, his refusal to stay safely inside some ivory tower of abstract speculation, his grinding concern with the meaning of fieldwork reports. The research review is exhaustive though ‘middle-aged’ if not actually ‘elderly’ ?the book was published in 1965 and, inevitably, it has a pretty well exclusively Franco-American bias. The early part of the book is a laborious outline, in the familiar European style, of the relationship between mental illness theories and various social philosophies (notably those of Comte and Durkheim) and the ponderousness is quite offputting?not so much of the Gallic esprit, more of the Teutonic solemnity, not to say incomprehensibility. Perhaps the translation is unsympathetic.
His final section is an intellectual tour de force?scholarly and wideranging. Sociologists will love this book for it does something to vindicate their discipline. Psychiatrists will, I expect, find it a hard slog and in the end will wonder if the effort was worthwhile. The author’s treatment of psychiatrists is unfailingly gentle and generous, but the process by which he arrives?uncompromisingly?at the popularisation of psychiatry must arouse misgivings among its practitioners.
Robert Ferguson
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.