Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 05:57:45 -0500 (EST)
From: Matthew King <making-AT-yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: ADD the new onanism?




On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Ian Robert Douglas wrote:

> forgive me if I'm missing the point here, but it seems to me what is
> interesting in the case of Ritalin is not so much the enforcement of
> normality, but precisely the question of how it is that our societies are
> becoming so pathological for their inhabitants.

I think it's a very good point.  Still, before depression and Prozac,
ADD was the classic case of a pathology produced and defined by its
treatment--if Ritalin makes you "better", then you have ADD (just like
these days you know you have depression if Prozac makes you "better").
But now that Ritalin and Prozac are so readily available, it almost
becomes questionable whether ADD and depression are serious pathologies at
all.  They're no big deal because they're so easily treatable....  

>  We seem to have come a
> long way from the cameral dream of the healthy, tranquil civitas.  Either
> that or governments (and States) really have lost control.

Or you could look at it like this:  whereas governments used to need to
ensure that everyone had access to basic material goods, education, etc.,
in order to realize that dream, now they just have to add Prozac and
Ritalin to that list.  

I readily grant that this is not a pretty picture....

Matthew

 ---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
      "If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window."
 -----------------------------(Samuel Beckett)------------------------------