Towards a New Philosophy of Mental Health

Book excerpt: This volume represents the results of the Sixteenth International Conference for Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, entitled “Neuroscience, Logic and Mental Development”. This edited collection brings together selected plenary and keynote papers from the conference, and represents a major contribution to an interdisciplinary dialogue in mental health through the use of new philosophical tools, emerging from neuroscience, clinical psychology, phenomenology and epistemology. The papers gathered in this volume are divided into four parts, depending on their disciplinary paradigm. The papers included in Part I are focused on advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging as theoretical underpinnings for progress in psychiatric and psychological explanations. Special attention is paid here to the critical reappraisal of current approaches to the implementation of neuroscience in mental health. Some of these papers end with suggestions for modifications to contemporary research programs. The papers belonging to Part II contribute to the psychological understanding of mental disorders, particularly personality disorders. Parts III and IV trace the implications of phenomenology and epistemology for the improvement of an interdisciplinary pluralogue in psychiatry.