Challenging the Therapeutic Narrative: Historical and Clinical Perspectives on the Genetics of Behavior

This book challenges the assumption that behavioral proclivities and pathologies are directly traceable to experience, using historical, cultural, and clinical perspectives to explore the potency of inherited factors in behavior. It appeals to psychiatrists, psychologists, and academics from various disciplines working in behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, and the history of science.

Format: Hardback
Length: 124 pages
Publication date: 18 January 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This comprehensive volume delves into and questions the prevailing belief that behavioral tendencies and disorders can be directly attributed to personal experiences, a notion that still holds significant sway in folk psychology and the minds of many mental health professionals. Despite robust evidence from the field of behavioral genetics indicating that genetic endowment surpasses other discrete factors in shaping development and psychopathology when external conditions are not extreme, this tendency persists.

An interdisciplinary approach is taken in this book, which employs historical, cultural, and clinical perspectives to challenge the notion of identity as solely the result of a life-narrative. While the nativist-empiricist debate has been rekindled by recent advancements in molecular biology, these ideas trace back to the Socratic dialogue on the innate mathematical sense possessed by an illiterate slave. The author adopts a philosophical and historical approach in reexamining the writings of select figures from science, medicine, and literature whose insights into the power of inherited factors in behavior were particularly foresighted, and ran counter to the modern trend toward the self as a narrative.

The final section of the volume utilizes historical and clinical perspectives to shed light on the enigmatic concept of innateness and underscores the significant implications of the revolution in behavioral genetics. By focusing on the clinical utility of the therapeutic narrative rather than the primacy of experience, the book aims to appeal to psychiatrists, psychologists, and scholars from diverse disciplines, including behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, philosophy of science, and the history of science.

Weight: 410g
Dimension: 216 x 138 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032395807