Childhood Bipolar Disorder and Questioning

The article “What’s Normal?” by Jerome Goodman in The New Yorker on April 9, 2007 opens a discussion of Alan Garfinkel’s Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. It is interesting to predict how Garfinkel would react to the information presented in the article.

Goodman writes on bipolar disorder in children, examining its controversial place in current psychology and how this place of conflict has developed. He explains the difficulties in identifying the disorder in children—- children are generally more unruly and harder to read from the ages of infancy to preteen than from adolescence through adulthood.

Because of this, for a long time, bipolar disorder was not considered for children, and many children of the late 80’s and 90’s who had behavioral problems were diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and then were labeled with bipolar disorder in adolescence. The question raised by this trend is whether or not so many children actually had ADHD or if they actually faced bipolar disorder from youth.

Depending on the psychologist, the willingness to accept a child case of bipolar disorder as legitimate varies. Some endorse the possibility, others refute it; some diagnose it, some refuse. Goodman points out that there are major discrepancies in psychology as a whole due to this conflict.

In terms of Garfinkel, there is a pertinent discussion. Garfinkel would raise questions not having to do with psychology specifically; he would hope to find exactly the right questions to ask for a clear understanding of why a child is suffering or behaving in a certain way. He would not be so concerned with revolutionizing psychology or the standards of bipolar disorder, but with examining a case thoroughly enough to find accurate explanations.

Garfinkel would most likely introduce the problem of defining bipolar disorder as part of its explanatory frame. Because Garfinkel encourages questioning like, “…there are nine planets. Why is this so?” (7), one might expect him to ask something like, “These are the symptoms of bipolar disorder. Why is this so?”

Of course, as Garfinkel goes on to say on page 7 about the nine planets, "It turns out that there is no nontrivial explanation. Modern science rejects the idea pf explaining that sort of thing, except by the trivial statement that that is how many there turned out to be." Similarly, modern science explains the symptoms of bipolar disorder as symptoms because they have been chosen as the explanatory framework of the disorder. Because these symptoms are the explanations permitted in modern science's contrast space as “the object to be explained,” (7), it becomes clear that bipolar disorder is not the issue determining whether or not someone has bipolar disorder, but the behavior indicative of the disorder.

Garfinkel explains the basis of questioning for Newtown's law of motion on page 8 in this way:
"...the "explanation" he did offer was peculiar: he said things do not need anything to keep moving, and hence that the question was mistaken. An object in motion just tends to remain in motion unless acted on by an outside force. In a certain way, this is trivial. Not as scientific advance, for it was a major scientific breakthough, but trivial as an answer to the question "Why does the object keep moving?" For it says, in effect, "It just keeps moving." Newtown rejected the question and by doing so rejected the forces that the midievals had postulated."

From this, the following becomes clear: Garfinkel would be most concerned with why the patient is the way he or she is rather than what the exact symptoms are of the disorder. Just as Garfinkel recognizes Newton's strength for rejecting questions within the contrast space of science of that time period, he might also praise the psychologists able to reorder the questioning of bipolar disorder according to the children themselves rather than their age. On top of this, sufficient explanations would only be so for Garfinkel if they directly answered why. Roundabout rationalizations would not satisfy him.

Therefore, it seems that Garfinkel would react in the following way to the conflicts facing bipolar disorder identification in children:
*If the patient, no matter the age, fit the specific framework for bipolar disorder, it seems that Garfinkel would not argue the diagnosis. If age were specific criteria under bipolar disorder as an explanatory frame, however, he might hesitate.*


WRITTEN IN REFERENCE TO:
"What's Normal?"
Jerome Goodman
The New Yorker
April 9, 2007

Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory
Alan Garfinkel
Yale University Press
New Haven, Connecticut and London, England
1981