On Being Normal and Other Disorders A Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics

by VERHAEGHE, PAUL

• ISBN13: 9781590510896
• ISBN10: 1590510895
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-11-17
• Publisher: Other Press

Summary

Winner 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.

Author Biography

Paul Verhaeghe

Paul Verhaeghe is senior professor at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and head of the Department for Psychoanalysis and Counseling Psychology. He teaches clinical psychodiagnostics and psychoanalytic psychotherapy and works as a psychoanalyst in private practice as well. He is the author of Does the Woman Exist? (1999) and On Being Normal and Other Disorders (2004), which won the Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship, all available from Other Press.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
I: DIAGNOSTICS AND DISCOURSE	1	(148)
Introduction: Clinical Psychodiagnostics versus Medical Diagnostics	3	(16)
Categorical Diagnostics versus Clinical Praxis: A Matter of Impossibility	19	(18)
The Impotence of Epistemology	37	(34)
Know-how in Clinical Practice: Doxa as the Result of Impotence and Impossibility	71	(56)
Conclusion: The Need for a Metapsychology	127	(22)
II: METAPSYCHOLOGY	149	(134)
Identity as a Relational Structure	153	(28)
Defense in Double Time: A Linear Model	181	(26)
From a Linear to a Circular Model: On Becoming a Subject	207	(28)
Etiology and Evolution: Nature, Nurture, and the Theory of the Drive	235	(24)
Conclusion: The Subject's Position in Relation to Anxiety, Guilt, and Depression	259	(24)
III: POSITIONS AND STRUCTURES OF THE SUBJECT	283	(176)
The Actualpathological Position: Panic Disorder and Somatization	289	(24)
Between Actualpathology and Psychopathology: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Borderline	313	(38)
The Psychopathological Position of the Subject: Hysteria and Obsessional Neurosis	351	(46)
Perverse Structure versus Perverse Traits	397	(32)
The Psychotic Structure of the Subject	429	(30)
Conclusion: Diagnosis and Treatment	459	(6)
References	465	(32)
Index	497