HiPhiS Seminar: “The Origins of Mental Illness”

Tuesday, May 9, 2017, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Polytech (Building 31), Serge Peytavin Lecture Hall – Triolet Campus.
Inter-university Seminar on the History and Philosophy of Science, 2017 series: “Causes, Foundations, Origins.”
Lecture presented by Bruno Falissard, psychiatrist and Professor of Public Health at Paris-Sud University.

Abstract:

It is often said that people tend to wonder more about the possible causes of their misfortunes than about those of their happiness. Clinical practice confirms this: patients are just as concerned with the causes of their illness as they are with their prognosis, even though the latter should affect them far more directly.
The question of causality in medicine is therefore essential; however, it raises numerous difficulties, particularly in psychiatry. Psychoanalysis, for example, has long proposed explanatory models that, at first glance, appear incompatible or irreconcilable with current findings in neuroscience.
So, when it comes to the causes or origins of mental illness, how can we gain a clearer understanding?
Learn more