The Simulacrum of Mental Illness, the DSM, and Madness

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  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6. Theorizing Mind and Body

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of mental illness as a simulacrum that has superseded genuine human madness, drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra. Psychiatric categories actively construct the phenomena they claim to merely describe, wielding immense definitional control. The technical vocabulary of the DSM has generated a hyperreal fiction, replacing the basic reality of madness with a closed system of psychiatry’s own making. Integrating Michel Foucault’s analysis of diffuse networks of power further elucidates how the medical gaze of psychiatry exerts docility through both actual and perceived surveillance. The end goal is the production of compliant, technologically enhanced subjects. Understanding madness as a Baudrillardian simulacrum reinforced by Foucauldian control opens vital critical space to confront the violence perpetrated in psychiatry’s name.

Author

• Kate Elizabeth Burrows, National Coalition of Independent Scholars