Psychiatry’s quest for credibility as a scientific discipline led it to adopt a disorder-label orientation in which mental conditions are categorized in terms of measurable behavioral criteria. In Reclaiming the Self in Psychiatry: Centering personal narrative for a humanist science (Routledge, 2025) Şerife Tekin offers an alternative framework that decenters the label and recenters the self. Tekin argues that how patients try to make sense of their experiences through self-narratives – including self-diagnosed labels – is an essential source of information for tailoring treatment. Tekin, who is associate professor of philosophy at State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University, proposes the Multitudinous Self (MuSe) model for integrating the patient’s self-perspective back into the psychiatric picture and helping psychiatry itself embrace a more sophisticated notion of scientific objectivity.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy