Re: Virtually Addicted

Dec 15, 2006 0 Replies

Must all misconduct be classified as a medical disorder?



Any moralist up to, say, 1950 could have told you that practically all wrongdoing is addictive. (If it weren't, people wouldn't do it.) After B. F. Skinner and the notion that morality has no place in a scientific view of the world, all faults of character are being medicalized.



I am not denying that (1) there are real mental illnesses of biological origin, some of the manifesting as lack of self-control, or that (2) addiction is a real biological phenomenon (especially addiction to drugs that alter brain chemistry).



But what's next? "Bank-robbing disorder"?



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