The recovery model, as applied in mental health, is significant because it intends to foster a critical retrieval by the subject of herself as a self-determining agent of change. This paper will show that the recovery model represents an approach to caring for the self that is congruent with critical themes inherent in some forms of contemporary philosophy, particularly that of Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas. The paper will also consider the contribution that Habermas’ discourse ethics could make towards the (...) non-coercive, dialogical resolution of differences between clients and professionals. (shrink)

This paper contends that African-centered models of psychopathology represent a heretical challenge to orthodox North American Mental Health. Heresy is the defiant rejection of ideology from a smaller community within the orthodoxy. African-centered models of psychopathology use much of the same language and ideas about the diagnostic process as Western psychiatry and clinical psychology but explicitly reject the ideological foundations of illness definition. The nature of the heretical critique is discussed, and implications for the future of this school of thought (...) are offered. (shrink)