An analysis of social perceptions of epilepsy: Increasing rationalization as seen through the theories of Comte and Weber

Abstract

This paper analyzes social ideas and prejudices surrounding epilepsy in terms of the theories of two major sociologists: Auguste Comte and Max Weber.

Social conceptions of epilepsy are analyzed in terms of Comte's thesis of the 3 stages of Western culture's interpretation of natural phenomena—a progression from a religious or superstitious method of explaining nature to a naturalistic model of social and physical reality and finally to a scientific model. Changing social conceptions of epilepsy, with their attending prejudices followed such a progression.

This paper follows the transition from the exclusion of epileptics from the cultural life of their people in classical Greece, Rome and the ancient Middle East as demon-possessed, or ritually banned outcasts, to the medieval view of epilepsy as a natural, but a fearful disorder, still surrounded by superstition and beliefs that the epileptic was to be avoided, to the modern, scientific view of epilepsy as a disorder of the brain. Prejudices have been ameliorated, but not eliminated, by this transition: in the modern clinical picture the epileptic, if not ‘possessed’, is still ‘sick’ and therefore barred from various activities and interactions in his society.

Weber's thesis, the core of which is that the Protestant work ethic, with its rationalistic values of deligence, efficiency and rational, goal-directed behavior was an important factor in the development of capitalistic economics in Western cultures is employed here to explain prejudices against epileptics, especially in the form of job discrimination in industrial societies. Because his disorder may prevent him from obtaining maximum efficiency (or because his disorder is believed to preclude maximum efficiency) the epileptic may find it difficult to hold his own in industrial societies.

This paper elucidates the way in which these general social theories impinge upon the treatment of epileptics in society in an attempt to better understand the obstacles which these individuals face on the way to full participation in the life of their society.