Abstract

The present paper intends to clear the way to considering all psychopathology as responses to failures in the human environment by examining three common sources of error in scientific reasoning about psychopathology: the false identification of "biological considerations" with the sub-interest of organic pathology, the idea that a person could be genetically predisposed or vulnerable to psychopathology, the failure to distinguish between causal forms of explanation and explanation based upon connections of meaning and significance. For convenience, the omnibus term "environmental failure-oppression" is introduced to refer to the totality of possible failures in the human environment