Scepticism of the gentle variety: interview with Derek Bolton, PhD

Abstract

This interview with Derek Bolton, PhD, goes into a discussion of his philosophical work on the diagnosis and definition of mental disorder, the basis of the standards or norms by which we judge that a person has a mental disorder, and the validity of the distinction between abnormal and normal mental functioning. Bolton argues that the notion that emerges from a conceptual analysis of psychiatry’s diagnostic manuals is not a naturalist notion of disorder, but one that is focussed on harm and suffering, and in which the personal, the social and the biological cannot be clearly distinguished. The implications of this thinking with regards to the relationship between the medical model and the psychological approaches are also discussed. His most recent philosophical work reconceptualizes the biopsychosocial model as a philosophical theory of biopsychosocial causal interactions and he argues that there are causal regulatory functions within the psychological domain, and this is so independent of whether they can be captured by a physicochemical description of brain processes.

Keywords:

• Philosophy of psychiatry
• mental disorder
• nosology
• biopsychosocial model
• naturalism
• normativism

Acknowledgements

This is an edited reprint of an interview that was originally published in Psychiatric Times on July 31, 2019 with the title “Skepticism of the Gentle Variety”, URL https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/skepticism-gentle-variety. Reprinted with permission.

Disclosure statement

The author and the interviewee declare no conflicts of interest.