ABSTRACT
Major schools of sociological theory were introduced along with the assertion that these theories implied opposing assumptions as to society’s process and change. The nascent American “profession” of psychiatry was organizing its domain around both a biological and social view of insanity. The biological, along with a genetic and somatic orientation were to come to dominate the literature of the profession. Social models eventually receded to the background. The Second World War provided a critical boost to the medicalization of deviance and to the profession of psychiatry. Large numbers of recruits from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds were suddenly defined as clients for psychiatric testing and treatment. By the 1960s, the medical model of mental illness with its implicit consensual social model, had many powerful supporters in the professions of psychiatry and psychology, and it was well integrated into mass culture.
