The shift in critical psychiatry from a biomedical model to a human-centered approach is not a new development. A recent article reflects on the origin of modern psychology, revealing how Michel Foucault’s earlier works align with contemporary social, community, and cultural psychologists advocating for change in the field.
Published in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, the article by Line Joranger of the University of South-Eastern Norway explores how Foucault’s early writings challenged psychiatry’s authority over human suffering and proposed a radically different way of understanding mental health—one that remains strikingly relevant today.
Joranger situates Foucault’s 1954 work within the broader landscape of contemporary social, community, and cultural psychology, drawing connections between his critiques and those of Peter Kinderman, Svend Brinkmann, and Isaak Prilleltensky. She writes:
“After a century of trying to develop an objective and empirical science of mental phenomena, there is still no agreement on how to explain them. Through the French historian of ideas and power analytic Michel Foucault’s works, I want to show why the idea of an objective and empirical science of psychology is hard to reach. Through his 1954 works, Foucault reveals how mental phenomena are affected by unstable variables, such as cultural ideas, social contexts, and individual experiences.”
Despite decades of attempts to build a truly scientific psychology, the field continues to struggle with fundamental questions about human experience. Joranger argues that the persistent failure to establish a universal, objective model of mental health suggests that Foucault’s insights remain indispensable.
Before fully embracing his poststructuralist critiques of power and subjectivity, Foucault was deeply engaged in questions of psychiatric reform. His early writings examined how psychology, despite its claims to scientific objectivity, remained entangled in social and cultural forces that shaped what was considered normal or pathological.
In his first book, Mental Illness and Personality, Foucault critiques the way psychology reduces the human mind to biological and physiological explanations, arguing that psychiatry has failed to develop an independent science of mental life. He calls psychiatric nosology—its classification of mental disorders—a form of “linguistic fraud,” designed to impose order on experiences that resist simple categorization.
Joranger highlights three key reasons Foucault believed psychology could never be truly scientific in the same way as the biological sciences:
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Psychology can never offer psychiatry what physiology offers somatic medicine.
Unlike physical illness, mental phenomena do not have clearly identifiable lesions or organ damage that can be measured and treated. -
Psychology can never fully distinguish between normal and pathological functions.
Traits associated with schizophrenia, for instance, can also be found in those deemed psychologically “normal,” making it impossible to draw rigid lines between illness and health. -
Psychology cannot understand a person’s experience of reality using biological concepts alone.
To grasp mental phenomena, psychologists must consider the individual’s social and cultural conditions rather than imposing static definitions of illness.
Foucault’s introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s Dream and Existence further illustrates his rejection of medical reductionism. He argues that poetry, not psychiatry, is the best means of capturing the complexity of human imagination and subjective experience—suggesting that psychology’s attempts to quantify the mind through diagnostic labels are fundamentally misguided.
How Foucault’s Work Informs Contemporary Critics of Psychiatry
Joranger connects Foucault’s insights to contemporary psychologists who challenge mainstream mental health models.
Peter Kinderman
Kinderman, a British clinical psychologist, has been a vocal critic of the “disease model” of mental health. In A Prescription for Psychiatry, he argues that emotional distress should not be framed as a symptom of biological illness but as part of the human condition. Like Foucault, he warns that psychiatric labels are arbitrary and invalid, reinforcing reductionist views of mental health while encouraging discrimination.
Svend Brinkmann
Brinkmann, a Danish psychologist, similarly critiques psychology’s reliance on objectivity. In his work Psychology as a Science of Life, Brinkmann writes:
“When the subject matter is human mental life, it might be better to live with conceptual confusion than obtaining consensus on a misguided foundation.”
Isaak Prilleltensky
Prilleltensky, an Argentine community psychologist, pushes for an integrated model of mental health that accounts for people’s feelings, cultural contexts, and sense of social justice. He contends that psychology remains trapped in medicalized frameworks, despite claiming to be interested in human well-being.
All of these thinkers share Foucault’s skepticism toward psychiatric authority and argue for approaches that respect the lived experiences of those labeled as mentally ill.
Breaking Psychiatry’s Hold on Mental Health
A common thread among Foucault and his intellectual successors is the critique of how psychiatry positions itself as the ultimate arbiter of mental health, often overriding the perspectives of those it claims to help. Thus, they strive to reframe concepts and develop methodology that isn’t standardized according to the biomedical framework with preconditioned and preconceived beliefs about outcomes.
Joranger’s analyses contribute to various movements that seek to resist and challenge these dominant medical paradigms, including incorporating lived experience, the psychological humanities, and other rights-based, human-centered approaches aimed at improving mental health care and treatment.
Psychology, as Joranger highlights, has largely failed to develop a model that fully accounts for the “boundary-breaking” nature of human experience.
Instead of reducing suffering to medical symptoms, Joranger argues that psychologists must adopt an “interdisciplinary view that can capture life as it is experienced and navigated.” Mental health must be understood within cultural, social, and political realities rather than through the narrow lens of biological dysfunction.
She concludes:
“They all believe that psychological research goes far beyond objective research and that the human psyche has more boundary-breaking sides than one empirically can demonstrate. The study of the human being must align with how people live their lives in specific cultures and communities. To approach the human mind, one needs an interdisciplinary view that can capture life as it is experienced and navigated. Practical psychology thus does not belong to the medical concepts and disciplines; it both needs and deserves its own concepts and its own basic thinking.”
Joranger’s analysis positions Foucault’s early critiques as foundational to ongoing movements resisting psychiatry’s dominance. By rejecting simplistic medical explanations for human distress, Foucault and his intellectual heirs call for a psychology that prioritizes lived experience, cultural meaning, and human dignity over rigid diagnostic categories.
Nice. “ When the subject matter is human mental life, it might be better to live with conceptual confusion than obtaining consensus on a misguided foundation.”
This seems true for several social sciences that apply the apparatus of natural science to human constructs, portraying the results as being scientific or objective, despite (in my view) arising from misguided foundations.
Economics, for instance, doesn’t explain natural human behavior—it explains how people act within a monetary system, rationalizing economic control. Political science does the same, describing how people behave under governance but treating power structures as inevitable rather than artificial. Before colonization, many societies functioned without money or centralized authority, yet these disciplines frame such systems as fundamental.
Economics rests on the value of money—a human invention whose worth is not derived from natural laws but from social convention. Money has value because people collectively believe it does; it is taught and internalized alongside natural phenomena, yet it is treated as though it holds intrinsic worth.
Economics doesn’t explain how humans naturally behave—it explains how people conditioned to function within a monetary system behave. It describes the predictable ways in which those who accept the premise of money act, but it does not account for human life beyond that construct.
Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, for instance, do not mint currency, yet they continue to survive just as effectively without it. Similarly, before European colonization, the indigenous peoples of North America operated without money in the way the “civilized” world understands it. In this sense, economics does not merely describe financial behavior—it arguably serves to rationalize systems of economic control.
Political science follows a similar pattern. It does not reveal how humans naturally behave but rather how they act within systems of governance, power, and law—systems created and enforced by other humans. Political science describes how individuals rise to power, how laws are structured, and how people behave under these conditions. Yet like economics, it frames these artificial structures as though they are fundamental aspects of human existence. In reality, they are traditions inherited from monarchs and conquerors.
Before the arrival of European colonists, many indigenous societies in North America operated without centralized authority in the form of kings, rulers, or states. Political science doesn’t describe human nature—it describes how “governed” people behave within hierarchical power structures. And, like economics, it arguably serves to rationalize oppression by portraying these structures as necessary or inevitable rather than contingent.
By treating these constructs as scientific realities, we risk mistaking social conditioning for what some assert is human nature.
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It’s human nature to idealize cultures different from one’s own; it’s called selective perception.
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Brilliant comment, Dan. Thank you.
“Foucault reveals how mental phenomena are affected by unstable variables, such as cultural ideas, social contexts, and individual experiences.” And I do agree at least somewhat with Foucault, I think (I did read his works in college), since all the distress and problems I personally dealt with, had to do with cultural, social, and individual experiences … which psychologists incorrectly assumed were personal “genetic” scientifically “invalid” DSM disorders … which they were not.
Although, I must say, in as much as I am now a believer that “God is dead,” and that might be a good thing, since it may mean God has omnipotent power again. I was not a believer in that belief system until 2013, or later, personally.
Foucault’s “early writings examined how psychology, despite its claims to scientific objectivity, remained entangled in social and cultural forces that shaped what was considered normal or pathological.”
Well, and we do have that systemic child abuse covering up “partnership” that the psychological industries do have with the mainstream religions. “The dirty little secret of the two original educated professions,” is still a paternalistic societal problem.
But I do agree, “Unlike physical illness, mental phenomena do not have clearly identifiable lesions or organ damage that can be measured and treated.” So both the scientific fraud based psychological and psychiatric communities have gone in the wrong direction.
“Psychology can never fully distinguish between normal and pathological functions.” I sadly agree, since seemingly all of the psychologists are non-medically trained doctors, who are too ignorant to know the ADHD drugs and antidepressants can create the symptoms of “bipolar.” And what’s sad is too many psychologists are also not smart enough to read the rules in their DSM, and they’re also too ignorant or unethical to also confess, that their psych drugs can also create the symptoms of “schizophrenia,” via anticholinergic toxidrome and neuroleptic induced deficit disorder.
https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Epidemic-Bullets-Psychiatric-Astonishing/dp/0307452425
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-child-does-not-have-bipolar-disorder/201402/dsm-5-and-child-neglect-and-abuse-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome
I could go on, quoting the improprieties that today’s scientific fraud based psychological industry is still participating in, but I’ll leave it for that right now.
Aside to say, I agree with you, Dan, that in as much as we need to rid Western civilization of the scientific fraud based psychological and psychiatric industries, we must also free humanity from the globalist banking system.
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What makes you think you know how humans “naturally behave”?
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People all over the world behaved differently (and more naturally) before their lives became monetized and ruled by imposed authority. Progress would have been made over the last couple of hundred years without money—maybe progress at a more responsible pace and with more respect for nature (instead of according to the accelerated pace and disregard for nature fostered by industrial competition and codified greed).
Nature does produce “freaks” like Nic Tesla, who did wonderful things to advance humanity for the sake of helping humanity and not really to make money from, or get rich from, his contributions. Having said that, the world sure could have treated him better considering what he did for our understanding of electricity. But others were too busy capitalizing on his ideas.
Children in many developing countries are forced to work in landfills and garbage dumps to survive, searching for recyclable materials or items of value.
Children and families scavenged Manila’s infamous landfill for decades, sorting through toxic waste for plastic, glass, and metal to sell. Despite official closure, scavenging continues in other dump sites like Payatas.
In Nicaragua, children in Managua’s La Chureca worked daily in hazardous conditions, exposed to toxic fumes and disease, collecting recyclables for pennies.
In Bangladesh’s capital, thousands of children work in garbage dumps, sifting through medical waste, rotting food, and industrial scraps for saleable items. They face extreme health risks, including infections and respiratory issues.
In Mumbai, India—Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums—has an informal recycling economy where children collect, clean, and sort waste materials from the city’s garbage, often inhaling harmful chemicals and working without safety measures.
There are of course more examples.
These children often work in extreme heat, without protective gear, and face physical dangers, exploitation, and health hazards. Many organizations attempt to intervene, but poverty and systemic inequality keep the cycle going.
Though commonly externalized, is this a natural environment encouraging natural behavior and development?
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The fact that exploitation existed long before money was ever used should tell you something about human nature.
Btw, you didn’t answered my question: what is “natural behavior”?
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Birdsong, I’m not sure you’re open to my idea of natural behavior. But I’ll share it anyway:
To me, natural human behavior refers to the ways humans lived for most of history—small-groups, self-sufficiency, and rhythms aligned with nature. The Industrial Revolutions disrupted this, replacing organic social and survival patterns with mechanized labor, rigid schedules, and systemic dependence, forcing people into unnatural ways of living.
It seems to me people were living more naturally in America before colonialism, for example. Colonists escaping an undesirable way of life resulting from the Eurasian history of concentrated political and economic power of conquerors and kings brought that way of life with them. That way of life wasn’t natural to the indigenous people of the Americas. It’s like they brought with them a virus that infected the Americas.
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It’s easy to buy into the trope of the “noble savage”, especially when viewing indigenous cultures through a modern lens. Indigenous societies were also plagued with exploitation, inequality and warfare over power and resources, just as other complex societies throughout history.
The Industrial Revolution made survival possible for people.
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The Industrial Revolution was a pivotal time in human history that brought forth both incredible opportunities and significant challenges.
It laid the groundwork for the cultivation and distribution of large quantities food that can and does prevent mass starvation as well as the manufacture and distribution of life-saving medicines without which millions would otherwise die of preventable or untreated disease.
It also offered people the opportunity to move beyond the confines of small towns or the chance to escape difficult family situations. These changes provided people the means to break free from the limitations of their past and pursue new lives.
The lesson? Change is often a double-edged sword that creates the need to find realistic solutions to negative consequences.
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“The Industrial Revolution made survival possible for people.” This isn’t clear to me. How do you know that?
Populations surviving to this day had no part in the Industrial Revolutions, and drew no benefit from them. These people don’t participate in the economy, either. So apparently neither does money “make it possible” to survive.
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Psychology is great “science” if you like being emotionally disconnected.
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I think the author of this article (Joranger) does not do a good enough job of distinguishing between psychiatry and psychology. There is almost universal agreement (well amongst readers of MIA at least) that psychiatry has become too much a biological reductionist approach to mental health, but I would hope that readers here will not see psychology in that light. There is much more diversity amongst psychologists. But what does it matter; the conversation here has become about economics, judging by comments made here so far. Deleuze & Guattari musings on “schizophrenia” and capitalism develops some of Foucault’s thinking – but Bateson’s more so. Let’s have some articles on those thinkers.
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I agree Nick. There is a wide variety of therapeutic approaches in psychology that address a lot of important issues in childhood development, core emotional, psychology and physical needs that need to be met, family dynamics and repeated behavioral patterns and insightful discussions about other issues like bullying, problems at work or in intimate relationships and sometimes social and cultural issues as well. Also, medications can help people to sleep better or function better.
I think when we have bad experiences, we tend to develop a black and white way of thinking from those experiences and we can become unrealistically negative.
I have had more bad than good experiences in the mental health system (and I agree that psychiatry has gone way overboard in the biological model that is dehumanizing) but I got some good and helpful insights into why I am the way that I am and had a few medications that helped me to sleep better (really bad insomnia) and thus function better.
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Some of us are here because we have experienced the human rights violations of the mental health system.
Others of us are here because we know there are better ways, but see that various means are being used to prevent those ways from being widely known and practiced.
I am in the latter group, though I am also painfully aware of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of “mental health.” In my mind, the first step in solving both problems is to take the concept of Spirit seriously and push for study, discussion and further research in that direction.
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Though Foucault was correct in criticizing psychiatry on the basis that it was power-based and insincere, Foucault knew no more about the psyche than any other academic of his time.
The reason that a workable understanding of psyche is so difficult to attain is because we are rigged that way – we are rigged to reject the concept of Spirit, which is in fact the most important concept needed for a workable understanding of the mind and psyche.
Though pushing the responsibility for mental distress over to the community or society in general is in some ways quite correct, without a full appreciation for past lives and other spiritual phenomena, a workable understanding of how this works will never be achieved.
The Critical Theory of Foucault and his comrades has achieved a needed disruption, but not any workable reform. We can dump traditional psychiatry (and psychology) and embrace a “social awareness” approach to mental health. But those most in need will be no better off, I can assure you.
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It seems Foucault’s main objection may have been the rise of intellectual bourgeoisie, a stubbornly pompous sector of society that thrives in today’s banal university system that now primarily feeds on people’s desire (insecurity) to feel more worthy of respect than the next person.
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For anyone interested in the application of many of Foucault’s observations to psychotherapy, I’d like to recommend the work of Michael White and Narrative Therapy.
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