The rhetoric of psychopharmacology

The present study attempts to apply the methodology of rhetorical analysis to a study of the current and historical rhetoric of psychopharmacology. Psychopharmacological journal articles and textbooks spanning a period of 1954 to the present were examined. The metaphors used in this literature were then thematized to determine the guiding images created by the rhetoric of these texts. Metaphors also were analyzed to determine what they reveal about the relationship between the discipline of psychopharmacology and the larger society.

Three themes were found among the metaphors in the rhetoric of psychopharmacology: Object, Power, Vision. The first theme, Object, concerns the discipline's tendency to represent psychological phenomenon as if they were physical objects. The second theme, Power, is concerned with the impersonal relationships that exist between objects. This relationship may be either passive or active. In general such relationships entail one phenomenon acting on a second, more passive, phenomenon on the basis of an impersonal set of rules. The third major theme, Vision, is concerned with the importance of seeing in the rhetoric of psychopharmacology. The discipline views people as "human machines", whose psychological processes are controlled by neurological mechanisms. The goal of psychopharmacology is to produce a rational, functioning individual.

Rationality is the guiding principle for human beings as well as for the profession of psychopharmacology. People are supposed to be predictable, logical, and in control of their emotions. Research and clinical activity of the discipline is guided by the rule of rationality.

A major shift in the rhetoric of psychopharmacology occurred in the late 1950s when researchers became more concerned with methodology. Researchers began to use double- blind, placebo controlled research designs in which the researcher had considerably less power to influence the outcome of the study. Emphasis was placed on the neurological mechanism of the brain and drug, in contrast to the earlier research which emphasized ease of management of patients within the hospital setting.

This project concludes by proposing that psychopharmacology's rational definition of human nature emerges from a society dominated by rational economic and political institutions.