234 Timothy J. Beck and Jacob W. Glazier
scientific and/or medical values. Put differently, abnormal psychology
presupposes a very narrow sense of normativity (i.e., our relations to social
norms and customs) that is grounded in a Westernized approach to
biomedical knowledge. By marginalizing the sociocultural dimensions of
human behavior, abnormal psychology has traditionally set out to prove
what is presumed from the beginning: namely, that certain behaviors are
naturally (either developmentally or genetically) more advantageous than
others. As we outline below, the very enterprise of abnormal psychology,
as it has traditionally been understood, is wedded to a biomedical approach
to abnormality, which is rooted historically in Western colonialism.
Current conceptions of mental illness have been fashioned largely by
and for the profession of psychiatry, which emerged out of physicians’
work within asylums for the insane, that proliferated across Europe during
the seventeenth century. Those working in these institutions often
performed experiments on residents living there in ways we would now
consider unethical. Practices like lobotomy—where stakes are driven
through the skulls of residents—were commonplace. Gradually, through
trial and error, such physicians came to learn about the role of biology in
psychological distress; although, not quite as much as many contemporary
textbooks might have us believe. To this day, there are still major questions
left unresolved about issues regarding how the mind relates to the body,
and even how abnormal psychology relates to science in general,
problematizing contemporary biomedical approaches to mental health care.
To complicate the field of abnormal psychology even further, it now
includes many more professionals than just psychiatrists, ranging from
scientists researching psychopathology to other mental health service
providers—like social workers and counselors. Throughout this chapter,
we outline some reasons why a biomedical approach to abnormal
psychology has not progressed in ways that early physicians working in
asylums and hospitals likely expected it would. To illustrate this, we
interrogate key concepts in abnormal psychology through the critical
lenses of three, highly interrelated trends in the field: decolonization,
deinstitutionalization, and decentralization.