Towards a Biopolitics of Psydiversity

Abstract

Contemporary psychiatry no longer views a large number of people who diverge from the “neurotypical” paradigm as patients who need to be “cured”, but simply as otherwise fully functional people with certain idiosyncrasies, and even the currently applicable label “disorder” has been challenged in the literature. The questions that need to be asked by philosophy of mind are thus not the classical “what are the rules according to which all human minds function?” or “how do we know that other minds are like mine?” but, rather, how to define sanity across a range of mental diversity without evoking a normative standard, and what kind of help is ethically feasible for people who have difficulties coping with that environment, but would not want their individuality chemically neutered. This opening article of the Special Issue sketches the problem in broader terms and presents a programmatic thesis that mental diversity, an empirical fact, should be acknowledged in modern society on par with the diversity of sexual orientations, cultural paradigms, and so on, ensuring that proper help is given to people who cannot do without it.