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Illnesses represent human judgments of conditions that exist in the natural world. They are essentially social constructions — products of our own creation.

— Peter Conrad Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (1980)

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What each culture views as the cause of madness is dependent on its world view.

Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (1980)

Public "facts" are not like pebbles on the beach, lying in the sun and waiting to be seen. They must instead be picked, polished, shaped and packaged. Finally ready for display they the bear the marks of their shapers.

Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (1980)

When a theological world view dominated, deviance was sin; when the nation-states emerged from the decay of feudalism, most deviance became designated as crime; and in our own scientifically oriented world, various forms of deviance are designated increasingly as medical problems. Thus we view the medical paradigm as the ascending paradigm for deviance designations in our postindustrial society.

Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (1980)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Peter Conrad (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.