In the Spring Term of 1999, Prof. Louis Sass (Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology) and Prof. Stephen Stich (Department of Philosophy) will be co-teaching a graduate seminar on philosophical issues in psychopathology. Sass and Stich come from very different intellectual traditions and have quite different views on a wide range of issues in philosophy and psychology. The course is very much an experiment, exploring the extent to which these two traditions can interact productively.

The course will begin by setting out four theoretical frameworks from which we can view the phenomena of psychopathology:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Phenomenology
• Social Construction

We will then consider a number of disorders and explore the extent to which each of these frameworks proves to be useful in understanding the disorders. Among the disorders we will consider are:

• schizophrenia
• autism
• depression
• multiple personality disorder

The readings for the seminar will include:

• Michel Foucault, Mental Illness and Psychology
• Simon Baron-Cohen, Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and the Theory of Mind
• Louis Sass, The paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the Schizophrenic Mind

and selections from:

• Michael McGuire and Alfonso Troisi, Darwinian Psychiatry
• Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul

The seminar will meet on Tuesdays, from 3:00 to 5:30 in the RuCCS "Playroom" (A-139, Psychology Building, Busch Campus).

During the term we hope to have a number of visiting speakers including Uta Frith and Chris Frith from University College London, and Josef Parnas from the Dept. of Psychiatry at the University of Copenhagen. During the weeks when our visitors are at Rutgers (the dates are not yet fixed) we will probably schedule extra sessions of the seminar.

Students may take the seminar for credit as either a GSAPP course (Advanced Studies in Clinical Psychology: Philosophy and Psychopathology. Course number: 18:821:611:01; index number 43551) or as a Philosophy course (Advanced Topics in Philosophy of Psychology: Philosophical Issues in Psychotherapy & Psychopathology. Course number: 16-730-676-01).

Please note: The seminar will not meet on Tuesday, January 19. The first meeting will be on Tuesday, January 26. Readings for that first session are:

• Tim Shallice, From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure, Chs. 1-3.
• T. Stone, & A. Young A. Delusions & brain injury: The philosopy and psychology of belief. Mind and Language, 1997, 12, 327-364.

Copies of these will be available for xeroxing in the Graduate Philosophy office and the RuCCS office.