{"title":"‘Autism’ or ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’: Does either represent a natural kind of psychological disorder?","authors":"R. Hassall","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2016.17.1.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2016.17.1.17","url":null,"abstract":"In DSM-5, ‘autism spectrum disorder’ (ASD) is a new diagnostic category effectively replacing the previous category of ‘autism’. In this paper I question whether either effectively represents a psychological natural kind with significant scientific and explanatory value. Despite the new categorisation, ‘ASD’ and ‘autism’ are effectively synonymous, and current understandings of ASD are based largely on previous research focused specifically on autism. However, there has been no stable consensus over the past 40 years about what autism actually is. No biological explanation has been discovered, and no single psychological theory can account for the heterogeneity of autistic symptoms. A recent large-scale population-based study failed to identify a unifying cognitive account of the variety of symptoms of autism. In the philosophy of science literature, there are widely accepted accounts of natural kinds which emphasise their role in scientific explanations and induction. These claim that natural kinds can typically be identified by clusters of properties which are held together by causal processes and which reflect the causal structure of the world in terms of their explanatory and predictive value. However, the concept of ASD fails to indicate any causal explanation and has very limited discriminant and predictive validity. Consequently ASD, as a diagnosis, cannot plausibly be seen as a psychological natural kind, since it does not appear to function as a powerful explanatory concept in science. Psychologists involved in autism diagnostic services should try to explain more clearly what it is that they believe they are diagnosing.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133331164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revolution in Psychology: From Alienation to Emancipation","authors":"I. Parker","doi":"10.2307/J.CTT18DZTGN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/J.CTT18DZTGN","url":null,"abstract":"AcknowledgementsIntroduction 1 What is psychology? Meet the family 2 Psychology as ideology: Individualism explained 3 Psychology at work: Observation and regulation of alienated activity 4 Pathologising dissent: Exploitation isolated and ratified 5 Material interests: The manufacture of distress 6 Spiritless conditions: Regulating therapeutic alternatives 7 Professional empowerment: Good citizens 8 Historical, personal and political: Psychology and revolution 9 Commonsense: Psychological culture on the left10 Elements of opposition: Psychological struggles now11 Transitional demands: Taking on psychology 12 What next? Reading and resources Notes References Index","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134091025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching conceptual issues through historical understanding","authors":"J. Elcock, D. Jones","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2015.16.1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2015.16.1.4","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we argue that the topic area of Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology is a well crafted one, in that historical analysis is an invaluable tool in teaching the conceptual issues that must be appreciated to gain a full understanding of psychology. Using selected teaching examples we discuss how the history of psychology can illuminate and inform an understanding of not only specific issues and debates in psychology, but also the nature of psychology as a reflexive, socially embedded discipline. We then go on to present a case study of a recent curriculum re-design at the University of Gloucestershire that put Conceptual and Historical Issues at the core of first-year teaching, with the intention that the insights gained will provide a firm foundation for understanding the remainder of the syllabus. Early indications are that introducing students to this perspective while they are new to university study encourages them to see it as a form of thinking differently that is inherent to Higher, versus Further, Education; whereas previous practice of covering it in a final-year capstone module resulted in some students treating it as a marginal topic.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132198334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Identifying Mental Deficiency Using Performance Tests. Review ofHoward Andrew Knox: Pioneer of intelligence testing at Ellis Island","authors":"J. Petit","doi":"10.1093/jahist/jau285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau285","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129492439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Disciplining the depressed? Considering contemporary treatments of depression as disciplinary techniques","authors":"A. Flintoff","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2014.15.1.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2014.15.1.12","url":null,"abstract":"This study explores contemporary treatments of depression in relation to Michel Foucault’s disciplinary techniques. These techniques are used as analytical tools and applied to two current treatments of depression: guided self-help and cognitive behavioural therapy. The analysis shows that in many ways these treatments do align with, and thus can be considered, disciplinary techniques. This increases the importance of considering issues of politics and power in relation to how people with depression are treated. However, this does not tell the full story; looking solely at disciplinary techniques does not capture the complexity of today’s treatments of depression. In attempting to adopt a conceptual approach that can speak to and complement clinical work, the notion of multiplicity is discussed as a way of retaining the important insights of Foucault’s work but also attending to the specific clinical practices that make depression what it is today.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115819900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tiny Brains, Big Psychologies: How Ants Changed Our Understanding of the Mind","authors":"C. Sleigh","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2012.14.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2012.14.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"InMental Evolution in Animals(1883), George Romanes wrestled with the relationship between brain size and intelligence. He could not quite bring himself to say that a creature with a brain so tiny as the ant’s was truly complex in its psychology. However, Romanes was radically out of step with the psychological developments that were shortly to follow, starting in continental Europe and spreading to the US. Beginning with the Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel, theorists began to dissociate ants’ psychology from their (limited) physical brains. As in the nineteenth century, the family Formicidae continued to provide one of psychology’s greatest riddles, but ants’ minds now became dispersed across the colony, rather than residing in the individual brain. This paper explores how that physical unseating of the mind interplayed with human concerns of the twentieth century, and with the differing ontologies of human psychology associated with them.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126385018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bodies in doubt: An American history of intersex","authors":"J. H. Jones","doi":"10.1093/jahist/jaq108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaq108","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126397084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconsidering Religious Experience Once Again: Psychology, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Review ofReligious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things.","authors":"J. Spickard","doi":"10.1093/SOCREL/SRR009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/SOCREL/SRR009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131736366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Child Guidance in Scotland 1918–1955: Psychiatry versus Psychology?","authors":"J. Stewart","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.26","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses the emergence of child guidance in Scotland from its origins in the 1920s through to the mid-1950s, by which time it was legislatively embedded in the post-war welfare state. It argues that the Scottish experience of child guidance was predominantly based on psychology rather than, as elsewhere in Great Britain, psychiatry; and that this was to have policy implications particularly as legislative provision came to be widely discussed during the Second World War. On one level, therefore, the Scottish version of child guidance won out over the medically based and psychiatrically oriented version which had been strongly promoted in the inter-war era. This was not unproblematic, however, as psychiatrists continued to lay claim to the field and psychology itself suffered a crisis of confidence just as it appeared to be gaining ownership of the child guidance project.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114539392","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Distinctiveness of Applied Educational Psychology in Scotland and Early Pathways into the Profession","authors":"J. Boyle, T. Mackay","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.37","url":null,"abstract":"Professional, applied educational psychology in Scotland has developed in a distinctive way, not only in relation to other parts of the UK but in international terms. Its distinctive features may be considered in five areas. First, the statutory foundations of Scottish educational psychology, as first set out in the Education (Scotland) Act 1946, do not have a parallel in any other country in the world. Second, this provided the context for the distinctive development of professional roles. Third, Scotland was distinctive in taking an international lead in the field of quality assurance. Fourth, it led the way in developing universal provision of post-school psychological services for young adults. Fifth, staffing ratios, which are among the best in the world. Qualifications and training in Scotland were shaped by the impact of scientific approaches to the theory and application of psychology on the practice of education in Europe. The EdB/BEd higher degrees in Scottish universities (eventually replaced by the MEd degree) became the first, and for some years the only, honours degrees in psychology in Scotland and accordingly one of the earliest pathways into psychology for students attending Scottish universities. Together with more broadly based professional remits defined by legislation, this led to the development of a ‘psychological’ approach to practice underpinning applied educational psychology and child guidance in Scotland.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115559155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}