Psychiatric Power

Abstract

Medicine is a manifestation of truth within norms of knowledge. Medicine is also a production of truth in the form of a test. The test gets its validity from the norms of knowledge in which it is conducted. "Knowledge" therefore must be drawn into question. MF dwells on two moments: the 'pasteurian revolution' where physcians are seen to transmit the diseases they are suppose to treat" and pyschiatry's 'production of the hysteria they are meant to treat.' In both cases, the medical body produces the very thing it is suppose to cure. The techniques of medicine and psychiatry are suppose to (1) make illness appear in their truth and (2) enable the doctor to dominate the disease (43). These practices, MF shows, are predicated upon exercises of power over other bodies: The MD knows the truth of you; MD prescribe treatments in relation to that truth; (and in the process) MD produces a reality that strips your power over your own body.