ABSTRACT
The following quotation does not come from some loopy Foucauldian, social constructionist, or risk sociologist, but a pro-Ritalin® clinician: “Within the last few years scientific studies have shown … that ADHD probably is not primarily a disorder of paying attention but one of self-regulation; how the self comes to manage itself within the larger realm of social behavior” (Barkley 1995, viii). Yet, despite his insight, Barkley and others still desire scientific correlations between this conduct they are so keen to control and a somatic flaw that they crave identifying as its underlying cause. There must be a physiological underpinning to disorders, lest they be dismissed as malingering by patients, as quick and easy explanations for parents, teachers, and doctors, or as self-interest on the part of the psy-function and the pharmaceutical and educational establishments (Conrad 1975). So despite endless controversies, a study conducted at Harvard University found that US$77 billion of national income was lost because of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) each year due to educational under-attainment (Medical News Today 2004) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics 2005) has no doubt that the Disorder exists. Nor does Carol Sutherland, who “knew something was seriously wrong when her husband tried to baptize the parakeet” (Brazao and Orwen 2001, NE.01). In 1990, a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) study included colorful pictures of brain scans, suggesting that a number of adults with a history of ADHD in childhood had decreased brain metabolism. These images circulated widely in the media, and the study was used to assert a biological basis for the Disorder in brain lesions that purportedly affected dopamine (Breggin 1998; Rose, S. 2006, 261). In the words of prominent academic Harold Koplewicz, “[i]t is not that your mother got divorces, or that your father didn’t wipe you the right way. . . . It really is DNA roulette” (quoted in Waters). In 2003, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggesting that people with ADHD had small brains led to debate over whether this was a function of the Disorder or its treatment. The author declined to make underlying data freely available. Not surprisingly, many mothers have welcomed medical diagnoses and drugs for dealing with their children in order to elude the patriarchal blame of psychoanalytic explanations and the childguidance movement – a classic case of competing forms of rent-seeking within the psy-function, with neurology and pharmacology triumphing over the talking cure.
