Premium
Taxonomic Anxieties: Axis I and Axis II in Prison
Author(s) -
Rhodes Lorna A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
medical anthropology quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.855
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-1387
pISSN - 0745-5194
DOI - 10.1525/maq.2000.14.3.346
Subject(s) - prison , agency (philosophy) , perspective (graphical) , ethnography , criminology , sociology , psychology , discipline , space (punctuation) , psychiatry , social psychology , social science , anthropology , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science , linguistics
This essay describes the use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry in the prison setting. The distinction between the Axis I disorders (major mental illness) and those designated Axis II (character disorders) is explored in terms of the professional division of labor in prison and the problems posed for prison discipline by "behaviorally disturbed" inmates. Conflicts over diagnosis are placed in ethnographic and historical perspective and form the basis for a discussion of the problematic relationship between disciplinary space and issues of subjection and agency, [prisons, psychiatric diagnosis, ethnography of prison, subjection, mental illness in prison, character disorders]