Introduction

In Part II, I explored the relations of language, power, and emotionality. Some say that power relations determine the bounds of sanity and madness, but this is an oversimplification. In this chapter I explore a Foucaultian theme – claims that the “psy disciplines” (N. Rose 1996, i.e., psychiatry, the first to emerge, and allied disciplines) have a growing, global influence on conceptualizations of emotion, and even on subjectivity. This impact is mediated through the treatment of ostensibly pathological states and patterns of feeling.

Before proceeding, I acknowledge a debt to Gregory Bateson (1972), whose insight into reflexivity (metacommunication, framing) and schizophrenia make him an important ancestor for a linguistically sensitive anthropology of mental illness.

The psy disciplines, writes Rose

Rose writes with the peculiar confidence of those who are not in the business of ethnographically, or cross-culturally, testing such questions of influence. Are there good grounds to believe Rose?

As my discussion of what I call “psychiatry's magic complex” (later in this chapter) indicates, there are reasons to doubt Rose's claims. Yet many share his perspective. More and more communities are encountering a new register that deals not only with emotion, but with politics, ritual traditions, etc. The register signals what philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre calls “emotivism,” a plague on modern logic (1980).