Foucault speaks of the formation of an individual’s identity, or the process of becoming someone else, as a worthy game. For postmodernists, it is considered a life-long process of reconstruction and re-evaluation. The identities that are the focus of this research are psychiatrists, but also the self. This research follows previous post-graduate research that reflected on knowledge, power, space, surveillance, the body and organisational control. The major questions of this earlier research was; “What constituted normality in the work place and who were the arbiters of this normality” Chapter one of this work - Psychiatrists in Post-modernity, introduces the research project through the research questions, motivation for the project and the challenges to be met. Chapter two is a theoretical chapter that presents Post-modern Philosophical Perspective and discusses the history of development of post-modern thought in social research. Chapter three – History, Myth and Reality, places today’s psychiatry in Australia, in historical context. Chapter four – People, Politics and Purpose, considers the current state of mental health policy in Australia. Chapter five – Methodology and Methods, considers the methodological debate in the social sciences between qualitative and quantitative research methods. Chapter six – Outcomes and Interpretation presents an interpretation of the research interviews and discusses the connections and possible meanings of the stories told by psychiatrists, within the context of the post-modern philosophical perspective. Chapter seven – Post-modern Psychiatry considers the question: is there or can there be a post-modern psychiatry? It takes the interpretations, connections and meanings from Chapter six and locates them in the wider social context of the Australian National Mental Health Strategy / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Bibliography: pages 351-389. / A review of the South African psychiatric literature reveals that the concept of culture is commonly reified. It is also used by the South African state to legitimate apartheid. The concept of cultural relativism, though often associated with liberal views internationally, is linked with state policies in South Africa. Some South African social scientists, therefore, strongly question the notion of relativism. This reaction unfortunately does not engage with the social reality of the widespread perception of cultural differences, in psychiatric settings and elsewhere. Issues of race and culture in psychiatric practice were explored in a psychiatry department of a liberal South African university. Observation of ward-rounds in a psychiatric casualty (emergency) facility over six months revealed that, as elsewhere in the world, a major cultural factor influencing clinicians is the relationship between psychiatry and general medicine. A cultural understanding of South African psychiatry must take account of this relationship. Ward-rounds in a facility treating Black psychiatric patients were observed over fifteen months. Black and white clinicians in these rounds were often in conflict over constructions of the concept of culture. Some appeared deeply ambivalent about cultural relativism. Psychiatric registrars (residents) attached to the department under study participated in loosely structured interviews exploring issues of race and culture in their work. They also responded to vignettes dealing with white, coloured and Black patients. Registrars felt uncomfortable about the role of the concept of cultural difference in affecting the welfare of Black patients, and in maintaining discrimination. Their own socialisation as practitioners in an individualising and medicalising discipline seems a major factor contributing to their ongoing reproduction of this discrimination. The study reveals the importance of exploring the views and experiences of practitioners. South African work focussing on the need for fundamental change in mental health care has generally glossed over details of extant practice. This dissertation shows, however, that a major site for mobilisation for change in South African mental health-care must be the psychiatric institution itself.

Orientador: Marko Synesio Alves Monteiro / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociências / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T20:43:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cheida_RodrigoSaraiva_M.pdf: 1113812 bytes, checksum: 155c5970a533817b929a2fd0540757f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar a "biologização" do Transtorno de Déficit de Atenção/Hiperatividade (TDA/H) na vertente organicista de doença mental da psiquiatria no Brasil, a partir do recorte metodológico dos Estudos Sociais da Ciência e Tecnologia (ESCT), especificamente os aportes teóricos da construção social da doença. O objetivo do estudo é investigar histórica e sociologicamente a forma pela qual o transtorno veio a ser investigado como uma patologia de origens biológicas pelas práticas psiquiátricas brasileiras. Para identificar os sentidos históricos pelos quais as fronteiras diagnósticas do transtorno possuem bases biológicas, foi feito um levantamento histórico para retomar as principais tradições da vertente organicista de pesquisa das doenças mentais da Psiquiatria no Brasil. Outro levantamento histórico buscou identificar, a partir do próprio conhecimento biológico do TDA/H, as contingências sociais do transtorno. A proposta de ambas as historiografias é investigar quais atores sociais mobilizaram técnicas e conhecimentos científicos oriundos da neurologia e da biologia até a sua atual classificação no Manual Diagnóstico e Estatístico de Distúrbios Mentais em sua quarta versão revisada - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - DSM-IV/RT - e a Classificação Internacional de Doenças - CID-10. Em seguida, foi realizada uma investigação em artigos coletados na base científica SCIELO para identificar quais os principais atores sociais, as técnicas e o conhecimento científico que são mobilizados para investigar o TDA/H, entre os anos de 2007 e 2012, no Brasil. Foi possível verificar que, em sua maioria, o conhecimento da patologia é produzido por pesquisadores das áreas da Psiquiatria e das Neurociências que utilizam técnicas baseadas em paradigmas neurocientíficos para a investigação de doenças mentais. Interpreta-se que o conhecimento neurológico do transtorno, por sua vez, licencia que a prática médico-psiquiátrica trate determinados fenômenos sociais como problemas médicos e faça o controle social dos indivíduos desatentos "anormais" para recuperá-los em sua condição "normal". Acredita-se que investigações que utilizam o metilfenidato, principal fármaco da terapia da patologia, pode ser uma forma de controle social pela ciência psiquiátrica brasileira, quando definem os comportamentos através do conhecimento neurocientífico como TDA/H. Também foi possível constatar que os estudos sobre o TDA/H, em sua maioria, foram financiados por indústrias farmacêuticas, ator social hegemônico na produção do conhecimento científico do TDA/H. A relação entre indústria farmacêutica e produção científica é um meio de legitimar a administração do psicofármaco metilfenidato como terapia principal no tratamento do transtorno. Desta forma, a relação entre indústria e doença é um fenômeno social no qual a ciência possui papel preponderante na aferição das categorias que podem ser consideradas "doença" / Abstract: This dissertation aims to investigate the development of research on Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in the organicist dimension of mental illness of psychiatry in Brazil, with the methodological approach of the Social Studies of Science and Technology (SSST), specifically the theoretical contribution of the social construction of illness. The objective of the study is to investigate historically and sociologically how the disorder came to be investigating with biological causes by Brazilian psychiatric practices. To identify the historical by which the boundaries of the disorder has a biological basis, a historical survey is done to resume the main research traditions of organicist shed of mental illness of Psychiatry in Brazil. Another historical survey seeks to identify the social contingences from the biological knowledge of ADHD. The proposal to investigate both historiographies is to analyses which social actors mobilized technical and scientific knowledge from neurology and biology to its current classification in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - DSM-IV/RT and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Then an investigation is carried out on the basis of scientific articles collected in SCIELO to identify the main social actors, the technical and scientific knowledge that are mobilized to investigate the ADHD, between 2007 and 2012, in Brazil. It was possible to verify, in most of the articles, that the knowledge of the pathology is done by researchers from the fields of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, which uses techniques based on neuroscientific paradigms for mental illness researches. It is interpreted that the neurological knowledge of the disorder, in turn, licenses the medical-psychiatric practices to treat certain social phenomenon as medical problems, under a social control of the individuals with the disorder treated as "abnormal" to get them back into their "normal" condition. It is proposed as an analysis that methylphenidate, the main drug therapy to the pathology, is a form of social control by Brazilian Psychiatry when they define the behaviors as ADHD. It also appeared that the studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies, the hegemonic social actor in the production of the scientific knowledge of ADHD. The relationship by the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific production is a way of legitimizing the administration of psychotropic drug methylphenidate as primary therapy in the treatment of the disorder. Thus, the relationship between industry and disease is a social phenomenon in which science has leading role in gauging the categories that can be considered disease / Mestrado / Politica Cientifica e Tecnologica / Mestre em Política Científica e Tecnológica