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Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental Illness in Neoliberal Society

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Psychiatric Hegemony

Abstract

In explaining the current expansion of the psychiatric discourse, Cohen draws on the Marxist scholarship of Gramsci, Althusser, and Habermas to argue that current diagnoses such as ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and social anxiety disorder serve specific ideological functions for the ruling classes in constructing and maintaining productive and compliant workers. In doing this, the sociologist frames the construction of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in the wider context of the decline in social welfarism and the rise of neoliberal values in the 1970s. Cohen concludes that the psychiatric discourse has become hegemonic, a situation in which “we have all become implicated as subjects at risk of mental disorder.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bruce M. Z. Cohen

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  1. Bruce M. Z. Cohen
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Cohen, B.M.Z. (2016). Psychiatric Hegemony: Mental Illness in Neoliberal Society. In: Psychiatric Hegemony. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46051-6_3

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