CfP: Online Workshop sychiatric Diagnosis – Empirical,and Philosophical Perspectives
Important Dates:
- Abstract Submission Deadline: 17.01.2025
- Notification Date: 31.01.2025
- Workshop Date: 21.02.2025
Psychiatric and psychological diagnosis is an increasingly frequent component of social life and a subject of analysis in social sciences and philosophy. The role of diagnosis in scientific and therapeutic discourse requires consideration of its practices and theoretical foundations, combining empirical, analytical, and normative approaches.
This workshop aims to foster an interdisciplinary scientific discussion where various facets of diagnosis form the central theme. We invite social scientists, especially anthropologists and sociologists focused on field research and critical discourse analysis, and philosophers exploring the foundations of psychiatric diagnosis within ethical and epistemological frameworks.
A particularly relevant philosophical framework is the theory of hermeneutical injustice, which examines harm arising from insufficient interpretive resources, potentially applicable to psychiatric diagnosis. Diagnosis can also serve as a process in which new empirical and identity qualities are conceptualized, embedded in institutional, economic, and social conditions, which directly impact individuals' experiences. Diagnosis shapes both expert and non-expert discourses, creating a space for mutual interaction and enabling new self-interpretations through non-expert practices like self-diagnosis. As diagnostic language increasingly penetrates social interpretive resources, new fields of inquiry emerge for philosophy and the social sciences.
We invite submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
- When does a psychiatric diagnosis properly fulfill its interpretive role, and how can this be empirically examined?
- How do economic, political, and institutional factors shape the diagnostic process?
- What types of diagnoses and diagnostic practices raise ethical concerns, and for what reasons?
- How does self-diagnosis develop, operate, and lead to identification with a particular condition?
- How are diagnostic concepts received by society, and what are the implications for their interpretive power and for individuals' self-awareness?
- How does diagnosis affect individuals' experiences, ecology, and everyday environments?
- How are psychiatric diagnoses linked to broader hermeneutical gaps and social marginalization?
Please send your abstract (no longer than 500 words and prepared for blind review) to psydia.conference@gmail.com with the subject line "PSY-DIAG." Include your name and affiliation in the email body.
Organizing Team:
- Christoph Merdes, Interdisciplinary Centre for Ethics, Jagiellonian University
- Natalia Filar, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences