Deinstitutionalization Contra Normalization: A Meditation upon the Narrative Accounts of Mental Health Practitioner

摘要

The link between discourse and institutions has been addressed in the past and reinforces the view of neo-institutionalists that action invokes discourse which in turn supports institutionalization. However, much less attention has been paid to the reverse process in which the legitimacy of an established or institutionalized organizational practice erodes or discontinues. In this paper the researchers focus on a group of medical practitioners, statutory and voluntary, responsible for treating the adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. They question the traditional treatment of patients deconstructing the medical verities which their training imposed on them and demonstrating a reflexivity and responsiveness to patient need which questions the validity of traditional treatments. The resonance of the Foucauldian discourse of medical practitioners gives way to an acceptance of patient suffering and shared self-knowledge. The paper suggests that such texts contain evidence of the beginnings of deinstitutionalization in a sector renowned for its deterministic approach to medical practice.