On Being Normal and Other Disorders: A Manual for Clinical PsychodiagnosticsWinner of the 2005 Goethe Award in Psychoanalytic Scholarship The central argument of On Being Normal and Other Disorders is that psychic identity is acquired through one's primary intersubjective relationships. Thus, the diagnosis of potential pathologies must also be founded on this relation. Given that the efficacy of all forms of treatment depends upon the therapeutic relation, a diagnostic of this sort has wide-ranging applications. Paul Verhaeghe's critical evaluation of the contemporary DSM-diagnostic shows that the lack of reference to an updated governing metapsychology impinges on the therapeutic value of the DSM categories. In response to this problem, the author sketches out the foundations of such a metapsychology by combining a Freudo-Lacanian approach with contemporary empirical research. Close attention is paid to the processes of identity acquisition to show how the self and the Other are not two separate entities. Rather, subject formation is seen as a process in which both the subject's and the Other's identity, as well as the relationship between them, comes into being. By engaging this new theoretical approach in a constant dialogue with the findings of contemporary research, this book provides a compass for the practical applications of such a differential diagnostic. Post-modern categories of anxiety disorders, personality disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorders are approached both through the well-known neurotic, psychotic, and perverse structures, as well as through the less familiar distinction between an actual pathology and a psychopathology. These two outlooks, which involve the role of language and the subject's relation to the Other, are spelled out to show their implications for treatment at every turn. |
Contents
Introduction Clinical Psychodiagnostics versus Medical Diagnostics | 3 |
Categorical Diagnostics versus Clinical Praxis A Matter of impossibility | 19 |
The Impotence of Epistemology | 37 |
Knowhow in Clinica Practice Doxa as the Result of Impotence and Impossibility | 71 |
Conclusion The Need for a Metapsychology | 127 |
METAPSYCHOLOGY | 149 |
Identity as a Relational Structure | 153 |
Defense in Double Time A Linear Model | 181 |
POSITIONS AND STRUCTURES OF THE SUBJECT | 283 |
The Actualpathologica Position Panic Disorder and Somatization | 289 |
Between Actualpathology and Psychopathology PostTraumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline | 313 |
The Psychopathological Position of the Subject Hysteria and Obsessional Neurosis | 351 |
Perverse Structure versus Perverse Traits | 397 |
The Psychotic Structure of the Subject | 429 |
DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT | 459 |
References | 465 |
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Common terms and phrases
actualpathological actualpathological position albeit alexithymia alienation answer anxiety approach attachment theory basis becomes behavior body Chapter characteristic child classical clinical practice clinical psychodiagnostics cognitive concept confrontation contemporary defense depression differential diagnostic discourse drive elaboration etiology evolutionary psychology father Fonagy Freud Freudian function fundamental fantasy gender guilt hence hysteria hysterical subject idea identification identity implies impossible jouissance Lacan Lacanian lack language later master means mirror stage moreover neurotic normal object obsessional neurosis oedipal original Other's desire panic disorder pathology patient personality disorder perspective perverse structure perverse subject phallic phallus phenomena post-traumatic stress disorder precisely primary problem psychiatry psychic psychoanalytic psychological psychopathology psychosis psychotherapy psychotic PTSD question Real reality relation relationship representation result S₁ schizophrenia secondary separation sexual signifiers somatic specific subject-formation Symbolic symptoms tension theory therapeutic therapist thing tion trauma treatment typical underlying understood unpleasure Verhaeghe