Psychiatry and the medicalization of abnormals: the role of the notion of antisocial personality disorder

Abstract

This article analyses the recent trajectory of the concept antisocial personality disorder in the field of psychiatry.  This is a relatively new concept, a nosological category which discloses some of the principal contemporary tendencies of the process of medicalization of social life.  We scrutinize in particular the development of the mentioned concept as the result of the protagonist character achieved by the notion of disorder in the processes of expansion of the field of psychiatry.  We also present four hypothesis related to the antisocial personality disorder, defined as a diagnostic category, which are related to the following aspects: the transference of functions of social control  of different types of behaviors to the field of medicine; the profile of the etiological models about the constitution of the antisocial personality; the definition of the family as a pathogen agent in contexts of poverty; and the moral character of the enshrined handbooks and instruments used for the diagnosis of the  antisocial personality disorder.