?A medical case history ... ?: Huntington?s disease and psychiatry ...

An important insight arising from the work of Michel Foucault is greater attention to the ways medical science produces subjects. In the case of Huntington's disease, the subjectivity produced has historically been con-structed as dysfunctional and threatening, while the subjectivity of the researcher was unscrutinised. This paper describes a Foucauldian analysis of 20th century medical and social scientific literature on the social conse-quences of Huntington's disease. It identifies three features of Huntington's disease as central to its discursive construction: its genetic transmission pattern, its age of onset and its behavioural symptoms. These qualities, converted into medical and psychiatric knowledge, facilitated the absorption of Huntington's disease into eugenicist discourse, a connection reflected throughout the literature. Through various techniques of power, especially genetic pedigrees, and the normalised appropriation and exploitation of patients' identities and data within psychiatry, affected individuals were subjectified as contaminated and threatening, and implicated in the intergenerational transmission of social dysfunction.

Automated summary

An important insight from Michel Foucault's work is the attention to how medical science shapes subjectivity. This paper uses a Foucauldian analysis to examine the construction of subjectivity in the context of Huntington's disease. The study identifies the key features of the disease, such as its genetic transmission, age of onset, and behavioral symptoms, and explores how medical and psychiatric knowledge has contributed to the stigmatization of affected individuals and their inclusion in eugenicist discourse.