Moral Engineering & Neuropsychiatry — Recasting a Culture of Intervention in Sweden

Robert Andersson

(Institute of Police Education, Linnæus University, Sweden)

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to problematize neuropsychiatryas public claims maker within a Swedish context. This will be done by applying what I conceptualize as a culture of intervention. Additionally, the paper also will show how neuropsychiatry’s public position interacts with a governance that works as a moral engineering. Governing is in the study understood as structuring the field of possible actions — what can be done or not is that which needs to be controlled. Neuropsychiatry seems to be the “essence” of the conduct of conduct — it is a knowledge-production that produces self-regulated subjects. The object is to analyse the conditions that make certain practises acceptable at a certain moment. I use it as a way of problematizing the generally accepted idea of scientific progress that underwrites the history of the neuropsychiatric diagnoses as an uncovering journey towards completion. The paper looks at how these neuropsychiatric diagnoses have become naturalized and given, an unquestionable regulatory knowledge that explain as well as prescribe what to do. This is further related to how the Swedish welfare state has gone from a social engineering rational to a moral engineering rational that builds on individuals taking responsibility over their own life.

Key words: governing, social engineering, moral engineering, Foucault, bio-politics, advanced liberalism, culture of intervention