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The Recovery Model: Discourse Ethics and the Retrieval of the Self

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Abstract

The recovery model, as applied in mental health, is significant because it intends to foster a critical retrieval by the subject of herself as a self-determining agent of change. This paper will show that the recovery model represents an approach to caring for the self that is congruent with critical themes inherent in some forms of contemporary philosophy, particularly that of Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. The paper will also consider the contribution that Habermas’ discourse ethics could make towards the non-coercive, dialogical resolution of differences between clients and professionals.

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Notes

  1. Foucault and Habermas have often taken positions which are philosophically opposed. This was particularly true with the “early” Foucault who seemed to deny the possibility for human agency. Habermas has historically been contrasted with Foucault as he is more affirming of the possibilities for human emancipation. It is important to note that the “later” Foucault viewed ethics, the practice of freedom and human emancipation in ways that were more compatible with Habermas’ discourse ethics.

  2. Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities, Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities Upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums of the Province of Ontario. Being for the Year Ending 30th September, 1893 (Toronto, ON: Warwick Bros. & Rutter, 1894), xv–xvi.

  3. Inspector of Prisons and Public Charities, Twenty-First Annual Report of the Inspector of Prisons & Public Charities Upon the Lunatic and Idiot Asylums for the Province of Ontario. Being for the Year Ending 30 th September, 1888 (Toronto, ON: Warwick & Son, 1889), 64–65.

  4. R. Porte, Madness: A Brief History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 104.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Providence Continuing Care Centre—Mental Health Services, Changing Attitudes, Changing Cultures, Conference Resource Manual, October, 2004 (Kingston ON: Providence Continuing Care Centre: Mental Health Services, 2004).

  7. A. Lunt, “Recovery: Moving From Concept Toward A Theory,” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 23 (2000): 401.

  8. D. Goodley, “Exploring the Scope of the Social Model of Disability” in Disabling Barriers-Enabling Environments, ed. John Swain et al. (London: Sage Publications, 2004), 121.

  9. P. Barker, “The Tidal Model: Psychiatric Colonization, Recovery and the Paradigm Shift in Mental Health Care,” International Journal of Mental Health Nursing 12 (2003): 98.

  10. P. Bracken and P. Thomas, “Postpsychiatry: A New Direction for Mental Health,” British Medical Journal 322 (2001): 725.

  11. R. Barton, “The Rehabilitation-Recovery Paradigm: A Statement of Philosophy for a Public Mental Health System,” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills 2 (998): 173.

  12. B. Lewis, “Psychiatric and Postmodern Theory,” Journal of Medical Humanities, 21 (2000): 82.

  13. E. Manias and A. Street, “Possibilities for Critical Social Theory and Foucault’s Work: A Toolbox Approach,” Nursing Inquiry 7 (2000): 53.

  14. M. Foucault, “The Ethics of the Concern of the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: New Press, 2003), 34.

  15. L. Davidson, Living Outside Mental Illness: Qualitative Studies of Recovery in Schizophrenia (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 45.

  16. M.M. Sellick, R. Delaney, and K. Brownlee, “The Deconstruction of Professional Knowledge: Accountability Without Authority,” Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 83 (2002): 494.

  17. Ibid, 495.

  18. Davidson, 45.

  19. N. Jacobson, “What is Recovery? A Conceptual Model and Explication,” Psychiatric Services 52 (2001): 482.

  20. J. Habermas, “What Is Universal Pragmatics,” in On the Pragmatics of Communication, ed. Maeve Cooke (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1998), 367.

  21. Ibid, 20.

  22. G. Roberts and P. Wolfson “The Rediscovery of Recovery: Open to All,” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 10 (2004): 42.

  23. Ibid, 40.

  24. K.W. Randal and D.A. Salem, “Mutual-Help Groups and Recovery: The Influence of Settings on Participants’ Experience of Recovery,” in Recovery in Mental Illness: Broadening Our Understanding of Mental Illness, ed. Ruth O. Ralph and Patrick W. Corrigan (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005), 175.

  25. J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1990), 67.

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  1. Providence Care, Mental Health Services, 752 King Street West, Bag 603, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 4X3

    Joseph A. Fardella

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Fardella, J.A. The Recovery Model: Discourse Ethics and the Retrieval of the Self. J Med Humanit 29, 111–126 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-008-9054-4

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