Niall Mclaren

eBook, ePUB

Narcisso-Fascism (eBook, ePUB)

The Psychopathology of Right-Wing Extremism

Beschreibung

This book examines the biological, social and psychological influences driving one of the most important, and frightening, trends in modern international politics, right-wing extremism. It is radically unlike anything written on the topic before and its conclusions should make all of us stop ... and worry about the world we are leaving to our children. Niall McLaren is a recently-retired Australian psychiatrist with a particular interest in the application of the philosophy of science to psychiatry. Of this work, Prof. Alan Patience, of the School of Social and Political Sciences, Melbourne University, said:"Niall McLaren's new book weaves the disciplines of psychiatry and political science into a highly original approach to the political psychology of fascism... (His) book takes the analysis of fascism to another level, warning how genetically and psychologically ingrained the fascist urge is in human nature generally. In revealing this with rare clarity, this book will help counter the deeply disturbing drift towards neo-facism across the contemporary world."

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Autor

Niall McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist, author and critic. He was born and educated in rural Western Australia, graduating in medicine at the University of WA in Perth in 1970. He completed his postgraduate training in psychiatry in 1977 and subsequently worked in prisons and then in the Veterans' Hospital, with a year's break working in the far southern region of Thailand. From 1983-87, he studied philosophy in order to undertake a PhD jointly in psychiatry and philosophy of science. In 1987, he left Perth city to travel to the remote Kimberley Region of Western Australia as the region's first psychiatrist. As a psychiatrist with no staff, no hospital beds, no clinic and not even an office, nearly 2000km from the nearest psychiatrist, he was the world's most isolated psychiatrist. While there, he continued studying and writing and began publishing work highly critical of mainstream psychiatry. After six years in the bush, he moved to Darwin, the capital of Australia's Northern Territory, first as chief psychiatrist for the Top End, then in private practice, where he concentrated on the large military population. He has since moved to Brisbane, in Queensland, and is emphatic that there will be no more moves. His work is highly original and he does not admit to any intellectual debt to psychiatrists, living or dead. When he graduated in psychiatry, he was aware that the field was not what it claimed to be. It was clear that psychiatrists routinely made major claims on the nature of mind and of mental disorder that were not justified in the literature and, he intuited, could never be justified. This led him to the philosophy of science which established that psychiatry lacked a formal model of mental disorder. In turn, this problem arose just because it had no model of mind. As a result, modern psychiatry lacks a basis in any known concept of science. It is, in fact, at best a proto-science and, at worst, crude and highly misleading pseudoscience. Almost invariably, his work provokes bitter antagonism from mainstream psychiatrists. Over the past forty years, orthodox psychiatry has committed itself totally to the reductionist biological approach to mental disorder, with no possible alternatives. Despite massive increases in expenditure on mental health, there is absolutely no evidence to support the oft-repeated claims that psychiatry is making great advances and people are better off than they have ever been. Every figure indicates that as psychiatry extends its reach, the mental health of the population declines. McLaren argues that this is just because psychiatry is not a science. Because it lacks a formal model of its field of study, mental disorder, psychiatry is perpetually at the mercy of social and political fads and fashions. He maintains that biological psychiatry is nothing more than a passing fad and must eventually go the way of psychoanalysis, behaviourism and possession theory. In the meantime, it is doing an immeasurable amount of damage.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Modern History Press
• Seitenzahl: 214
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. August 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781615997565
• Artikelnr.: 69223373