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Head Shop vs. Laboratory

Tom Coates

18:40 / 18.04.04

This is a serious question that arises out of the first of the following two threads based upon a legitimate confusion on my part about where they should live - Head Shop or Laboratory - together with a sense that (for some reason) they don't sit well in the Head Shop. So where should they sit?

Why Necrophilia? - a thread that is looking for a psychiatric or psychological understanding of the appeal of necrophilia or the motives of people who practice it.

Beyond Anti-Psychiatry - a thread about the legitimacy of psychiatric discourses, the role of doctors and whether mental health should be demedicalised?

grant

18:56 / 19.04.04

I was thinking about the Beyond Anti-Psychiatry thread as Laboratory fodder already, actually. It's very much about medicine-as-science (as intrusive or useful, alternately)... but it's also about people's conceptions of that branch of science.

I don't think that should matter, really -- if it's about the science, it should go in the Lab.

If it's about anti-psychiatry as a social phenomenon, though, it's much trickier.

Agh! I'm still conflicted!

grant

19:21 / 19.04.04

....but the necrophilia one is pretty clear cut -- it's about a pathology as a pathology, in much the same way a thread about paxil is about a medicine.

Tom Coates

20:42 / 20.04.04

So should we move them do you think?

grant

21:26 / 20.04.04

The necrophilia one's already moved, isn't it?

I think the anti-psychiatry one is still in the Head Shop, I'm still unsure which side is its One True Orientation, so I'm just as happy that it's in the Head Shop.

In support of its Head-Shoppiness, I think, is the way that Ganesh sets up "Anti-Psychiatry" as a social/cultural phenomenon. That's really what the discussion is (or should be) about.

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