The use of the phrase “handbook” for this Oxford series is ironic, because the physical books are much too large to read in one’s hand.  They would be better called “tablebooks.” This one has about 1340 pages and weighs well over 4 lbs.  Readers might do better to use the online facility provides by Oxford University Press, which gives access to pdfs. There is also a companion site that has additional resources. It is clear why publishers like these handbooks: they are prestigious and costly. In the US, the hardcover and paperback sell for around $76, and the Kindle version is a little over $70.  Of course, this is a bargain compared to other comparable books. For example, Springer’s Handbook of Neuroethics is 500 pages longer than this volume, but sells for $999 at Amazon.

The book itself has 73 chapters and 87 contributors. I haven’t read the whole book. I have read about half the chapters, and I have browsed most of the others, enough for me to form an opinion about this tome. I also used the book in an undergraduate course in the philosophy of psychiatry, explaining the background and themes to the students, and this helped me get a sense of how those without much background react to the articles.

There are many good articles by leaders in the field of philosophy of psychiatry here. These are new works that will be of interest to those doing research in the area.  There are also some very helpful articles that make more effort to survey and summarize their topics. Then there are quite of articles that are less interesting, and might not have made it into a blind-peer-reviewed journal. Overall, the book does well at demonstrating the breadth of the area, and the philosophical richness of the issues under scrutiny.

With 73 chapters, it is hard to give an impression of what they all say. There are different sections, with broad categories for headings.  The best defined are those on history and classification of mental illness.  It is important to note that the book does not attempt to give a broad survey of historical issues: the papers are a variety of issues: the history of the insanity defense, ancient approaches to mental illness, the work of Griesinger and Jaspers, a discussion of Michel Foucault, and the history of depression memoirs. So the book provides a selection of ideas rather than an overview of most of the work done in any particular area.  So these chapters are going to be helpful to those curious about the subject: they will show what kind of work goes on in the area.  They will also be useful to professional philosophers since some of these papers would easily fit in good peer reviewed journals. On the other hand, some are more summaries of current ideas in the literature, or are more quirky, setting out suggestions which might not pass strict peer review but are informative about the approach they describe.

My own favorite papers were Derek Bolton: “What is Mental Illness?” and Hanna Pickard: “Responsibility without Blame: Philosophical Reflections on Clinical Practice.”  Bolton’s chapter basically reprises the central position in his book What is Mental Disorder? which argues against the possibility of a scientific definition of mental disorder due to the nature of the field and the problems people deal with.  He emphasizes that science can produce useful information for clinicians and the main role of mental health professionals is to reduce suffering and to help people, and he shows that several definitions of disorder are problematic. This chapter serves as a useful summary of his ideas for those who have not read his book, and so is a nice contribution to the literature. Bolton’s position isn’t radically new, but it is both humane and reasonable.  Pickard’s paper has been available for several years before the publication of this collection, through her own website. It is part of a larger project on ways of holding patients to acknowledge their own agency without expressing resentment or recrimination, and it has both clinical and philosophical dimensions. It’s a promising project, providing philosophical subtlety and ideas that may have therapeutic pay off.  It is clear that practices of praise and blame are morally essential for our understanding of moral responsibility, but at the same time Pickard may be right that it is possible to separate out blaming from holding people morally responsible for their actions. It is good that her ideas are getting acknowledgment here.

Most readers will find enough chapters here interesting and stimulating, and the volume as a whole is rich with its collection of different approaches. Many of these chapters serve as a helpful basis for discussion in an educational setting, and this collection is a good resource for a classroom, although it will take a lot of work to explain the background of ideas to students so enabling them to grasp the debates. So while the collection is overwhelming in its size and no one is going to want to read it from start to finish, it is worth being persistent with it and sampling as many chapters as possible.

The publication of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry is a useful marker of the growth of this field and its establishment as an important and flourishing part of philosophy. But it has more than symbolic meaning; it will be a resource that professionals both in philosophy and other areas of study turn to for a variety of purposes.     

© 2015 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York