Abstract

I hope to show that mental disorders are not analogous to physiological diseases. I hope to show that a mental disorder like bipolar disorder cannot be located in the brain in the way a physiological disease like cirrhosis can be located in the liver. Mental disorders, unlike physiological diseases, lack a locatable corporeal basis to serve as a visible fulcrum on which to be based. However, I hope to also demonstrate that it is a mistake to infer the inexistence of disorders from such an absence of a locatable corporeal basis. There are countless phenomena including the force fields pointed out by physics that lack such a basis but whose reality isn’t doubted; by the fact of such absence alone, we have no reason to doubt the existence of mental disorders, nor, for that matter, the existence of the minds thatexperience them.