[The psychiatric criticism of social prejudices as a medical strategy of legitimation].

The subject of this article is the relation between psychiatric knowledge and social prejudice. This will be observed from the perspective of the medical discourse and the perspective of the history of science in a case study on epilepsy. In context of an increasing democratization of science and society a discussion on the social discrimination of epileptic patients entered the medical discourse in the 1960s and 70s. In the medical discourse the cause for discrimination is ascribed to emotionally determined prejudices found in the population, that are to be countered by educating the population with scientific knowledge. From the perspective of the history of science it however becomes apparent, that the prejudices found in the population are a result of a popularization of psychiatric knowledge beginning in the end of the 19th and reaching well into the 20th century. Thus, it is science and not the population that is the source of these so called prejudices. In the closing remarks these findings are discussed as different 'discourse' strategies for the legitimation of psychiatry and psychiatric objects.