ABSTRACT
Despite its antiquity, the dominant mode of thinking in the sociology of mental illness is still that of the labelling perspective. It continues to be a central plank in the teaching of sociology on nearly all basic courses, and it makes its appearance in the curricula of both social workers and mental health nurses. In the meantime, labelling theory, and the whole heated controversy over it that took place in the 1970s, has been mostly bypassed by psychiatrists and psychiatric researchers. There is a wealth of written material dating mostly from the 1970s, none of which can really be said to have comprehensively settled the question one way or the other. The theoretical and philosophical issues raised by the labelling debate were never resolved, and have therefore been simply left behind, only to re-emerge in different forms and terminologies in the present day.
