CFP: Psychiatric Diagnosis – Empirical and Philosophical Perspectives

Venue: Online
There is no conference fee.
Important Dates:
Abstract Submission Deadline: 17. 01. 2025
Notification Date: 31. 01. 2025
Workshop Date: 21. 2. 2025
Psychiatric and psychological diagnosis is an increasingly frequent
component of social life and a subject of analysis in social sciences and
philosophy. The role of diagnosis in the scientific as well as therapeutic
discourse requires a consideration of its practices as well as its theoretical
foundations, combining empirical, analytical and normative approaches.
This workshop aims to create an interdisciplinary scientific discussion in
which the various facets of diagnosis form the leading motif. We invite
social scientists, especially anthropologists and sociologists focusing on
field research and critical discourse analysis, and philosophers, examining
the foundations of psychiatric diagnosis with ethical and epistemological
normative frameworks.
A particularly relevant philosophical framework presents itself in the
theory of hermeneutical injustice. This approach analyzes harm stemming
from deficient interpretive resources, a category arguably applicable to
psychiatric diagnosis. This closely relates to the fact that diagnosis can
also be a process in which new empirical and identity qualities are
conceptualized. The process is embedded in institutional, economic, and
social conditions, the influence of which has a direct impact on an
individual's experiences.Diagnosis is also a practice that actively shapes expert and non-expert
discourses, and also creates a field for their mutual interaction. It provides
an opportunity for new interpretations of oneself in expert discourse
through the non-expert practice of self-diagnosis. In an era when diagnosis
and its language are penetrating social interpretative resources, new fields
of scientific consideration are opening up for philosophy and the social
sciences.
We invite submissions on questions as, but not limited to the following:
- When does a psychiatric diagnosis properly fulfill its interpretative role
and how can it be empirically examined?
- How do economic, political, and institutional factors shape the diagnostic
process?
- What types of diagnoses and diagnostic practices are particularly
concerning from an ethical perspective and for what reasons?
- How does the process of self-diagnosis formulate, work and lead to
identification with particular condition?
- How are diagnostic concepts received by the wider society and what are
the consequences for their interpretive power and the self-awareness of
individuals who identify with the concept?
- How does diagnosis affect the experience of the individual, their ecology
and everyday environment?
- How are psychiatric diagnoses linked to broader hermeneutical gaps and
social marginalisation?
Please send your abstract, no longer than 500 words and prepared for
blind review, to [email protected]. Use the subject line
PSY-DIAG and include your name and affiliation in the email body.
Organizing Team:
Christoph Merdes, Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics, Jagiellonian
UniversityNatalia Filar, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy
of Sciences