Conceptual and Contextual Descriptions of the Bipolar Disorder Spectrum: Commentaries on the State of Psychology as Reflected through Polarised Epistemologies

Bipolar mood disorder has been traditionally researched, explored, and explained from a modernistic, psychiatric perspective. The purpose of this paper is to explicate an alternative description for bipolar mood disorder, from a postmodern perspective. The widely accepted psychiatric knowledge focuses on the signs and symptoms of the disorder, pharmacological treatments, and manualised psychotherapies. This article shifts the focus from an intrapsychic, deficit perspective towards one which is inclusive of surrounding discourses and patterned relationships. The social constructionist research approach is followed, utilising methodologies such as vignette and thematic analyses for textual deconstruction and reconstruction. The following themes emerged as being pertinent to the construction of bipolar mood disorder: The power differentials (individual, institutional and relationship power); The expert (the psychiatric, the psychotherapeutic and the patient’s expertise); The theme of problems (as discourses, moral judgements, emergent dilemmas, and multiple realities); Meaning generating systems (modernism and postmodernism, meaning in diagnosis, and connection and disconnection); Belonging. The themes add value to the way in which bipolar mood disorder is understood and worked with in therapeutic domains, widening the taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about the intrinsic nature of such a diagnosis. This paper explores how bipolar mood disorder can be constructed from both epistemological positions of modernism and postmodernism. The specific focus of this paper is in explicating a postmodern take on a traditionally accepted psychiatric diagnosis. The aims and intentions are to explore the alternative ways of understanding the diagnosis itself, the way it is experienced by those who have been diagnosed as well as the professionals who work with the illness, and then to provide commentary on the discourses which shape the way we understand human behaviour. To begin with, a traditional view of bipolar mood disorder is offered through the medical model lens. This overview focuses on current research within bipolar mood