Lessons of the Paranoid

• In Event: 20820 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 6. Mental Health

Abstract

This paper examines the role that the extreme case formulation played in a line of thought from William James to W. I. Thomas, Edwin Lemert and Erving Goffman. All employed the figure of the paranoid as an extreme case to defend a new perspective they were developing. The paranoid was there in James’s advance of a new perspectives on mysticism, in Thomas’s views on subjective meaning, in Lemert’s development of a sociological approach to mental symptoms, and to Goffman’s statement on frame analysis and the vulnerability of experience. The similarities and differences in the approach of each author are analyzed and some implications are discussed.

Author

• Gary D Jaworski, Fairleigh Dickison University