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A History of Self-Harm in BritainConclusion: The Politics of Self-Harm: Social Setting and Self-Regulation

A History of Self-Harm in Britain: Conclusion: The Politics of Self-Harm: Social Setting and... [Almost three decades ago, historian Howard Kushner writes of his unease at increasingly neurological understandings of behaviour such as suicide. He argues that ‘[o]ne feature of neuropathological approaches, however, seems unaffected by this increasing sophistication: the more scientifically complex these investigations become, the more they tend to ignore the social and historical context in which the behavior that they seek to explain takes place’.1 In these accounts, neurology displaces social context. In characteristically forthright terms, in 2014 Roger Cooter describes the turn to neurological explanations as ‘like becoming the victim of mind parasites’ because these explanations foreclose the ability to think critically about the social and cultural context of the explanations themselves: they are presented as universally true and outside of culture or history.2] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A History of Self-Harm in BritainConclusion: The Politics of Self-Harm: Social Setting and Self-Regulation

Part of the Mental Health in Historical Perspective Book Series
Millard, Chris
Springer Journals — Jan 15, 2016
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19 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and the Author(s) 2015
ISBN
978-1-137-54773-6
Pages
192 –211
DOI
10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Almost three decades ago, historian Howard Kushner writes of his unease at increasingly neurological understandings of behaviour such as suicide. He argues that ‘[o]ne feature of neuropathological approaches, however, seems unaffected by this increasing sophistication: the more scientifically complex these investigations become, the more they tend to ignore the social and historical context in which the behavior that they seek to explain takes place’.1 In these accounts, neurology displaces social context. In characteristically forthright terms, in 2014 Roger Cooter describes the turn to neurological explanations as ‘like becoming the victim of mind parasites’ because these explanations foreclose the ability to think critically about the social and cultural context of the explanations themselves: they are presented as universally true and outside of culture or history.2]

Published: Jan 15, 2016

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