ABSTRACT
Knowledge is a form of power, and knowledge claims are usually (at least partly), power claims. Each of us is always an agent of some vested interest, even if that vested interest is just ourselves. In the History of Madness, Foucault demonstrates that approaches to the care of madness’ are inextricably bound up with control and power of whatever the current, conventional morality of the time and location happens to be. An alternative approach is to take a ‘multi-logical’ view, that each form of knowledge is useful, when applied to the appropriate perspective and relationship. This would be the approach of the ‘integrated practitioner’, as it accepts the value and limitations of each approach. David Hume was the first philosopher to point out that knowledge statements can be of two different types: ‘it is’ and ‘it ought to be’. ‘It ought to be’ statements are ‘prescriptive’ or ‘normative’ statements made about what the peoples ‘ought’ to do.
