Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
So far, the chapters in this book have explored how, in clinical psychiatry, the notion of insight has become conceptualised as an independent phenomenon, one that not only could be observed (to different extents) in patients with mental illness but one that could, moreover, be measured and related to other clinical and non-clinical variables. We have seen how, in Western cultures, this demarcation of insight as an independent variable became possible in the context of a number of factors including, a background of philosophical/psychological thought encouraging self-observation and self-understanding, changing ideas concerning the nature of mental illness itself, and, an environment that fostered close clinical observation. Then, reviewing the study of patients' insight in various clinical areas, we have seen that perspectives taken to understand and assess insight in clinical (and non-clinical) populations have been quite different. In part, this seems to have occurred as a result of diverse theoretical positions taken by the different professional disciplines. In addition, however, and closely interlinked with this is the fact that the different demands of the various clinical populations have determined to some extent the approaches taken. This issue will be discussed in more detail later. However, it is of interest to reiterate, that in general psychiatry it was the observation that patients with mental illness could have insight that led to further work exploring this phenomenon. In contrast, in patients with neurological/neuropsychological impairments, it was the converse observation that determined approaches exploring insight in this clinical group.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.